Have you ever watched your tween struggle with a concept and found yourself thinking, “They should know this by now”?
This feeling becomes especially intense when homeschooling middle schoolers, who seem caught between childhood and independence.
Pre-teens are at such a unique developmental stage — they want to be treated like they’re older, but they still need more guidance than they’d like to admit.
I had an experience recently that completely shifted my perspective on learning struggles with this age group, and it revealed a simple but powerful strategy that can turn hours of frustration into breakthrough moments of understanding. If you’re ready to stop the homeschool battles and start seeing real progress with your middle schooler, this insight might be exactly what you need.
When Experience Meets a Wall
Last week, I was working through a jazz arrangement of “Take the A Train” at my keyboard. Everything was going smoothly until I hit one particular section that completely stumped me. I must have listened to Oscar Peterson play those few bars twenty times, replaying the same passage over and over.
This was frustrating because I’m not a beginner. I can pick out intervals, I know my scales, and I can usually hear what’s happening in a piece and work it out. But this section? I had absolutely no clue what was going on.
I tried everything I could think of. I listened carefully, paused and replayed, attempted to match the notes, and analyzed patterns. Nothing worked. I spent an embarrassing amount of time on those few measures and remained completely stuck.
The Power of the Right Knowledge
When my lesson day arrived, I brought up my struggle with my teacher. I played the problematic section and said, “I’ve tried everything I can think of, but I cannot figure this out.”
My teacher listened for just a moment and said casually, “Oh, he’s running up a whole tone scale using augmented fifths.”
Just like that, I had my answer.
I shook my head and laughed. “Well, no wonder I couldn’t figure it out. I haven’t thought about whole tone scales in years, and it never crossed my mind that augmented fifths would be used this way.”
The concepts weren’t foreign to me — I knew what whole tone scales and augmented fifths were. But I hadn’t connected that knowledge to this specific application. It simply wasn’t in my active toolkit. To my teacher, with his years of experience, the pattern was immediately obvious.
The Learning Lightbulb Moment
As I reflected on this experience, I realized it perfectly illustrates something crucial about how our tweens learn. How often do we watch them struggle and think, “Just try harder — you know this stuff”? I’ve certainly been guilty of this kind of thinking over the years, especially with pre-teens who seem so capable in some areas yet completely stumped in others.
But what if our middle schoolers aren’t stuck because they’re lazy or not applying themselves? What if, like me with that jazz passage, they’re simply missing a connecting piece?
They might have all the individual ingredients — the basic concepts, the foundational knowledge — but they don’t know how those pieces fit together. The connections haven’t been made explicit. The dots remain unconnected.
Meanwhile, we adults can see the solution clearly because we have the experience to recognize the patterns. We can instantly connect the dots, not necessarily because we’re smarter, but because we’ve encountered similar situations before.
Why Explicit Teaching Matters
This experience reinforced something I believe strongly, particularly when working with tweens: explicit teaching is essential. While there are educational philosophies that emphasize discovery learning — just expose kids to concepts and they’ll figure things out when they need to — this approach has significant limitations, especially during the tween years when abstract thinking is still developing and pre-teens are navigating increased academic complexity.
Don’t get me wrong — discovery learning has value. We absolutely want our children to explore, experiment, and figure things out for themselves. But sometimes they end up spinning their wheels because we haven’t explicitly taught them a crucial connecting concept.
My piano teacher could have said, “Keep listening and see if you can work it out,” but that wouldn’t have been helpful in this situation. I would have remained stuck because I didn’t know which pieces to connect. Without the explicit knowledge of whole tone scales in this context, no amount of listening would have solved my puzzle.
The Five-Minute Solution
Sometimes a quick, direct explanation can prevent hours or even days of frustration. When we tell our tweens “you should know this,” we often forget how many times we needed to encounter a concept before it truly clicked for us. Pre-teens, in particular, are dealing with so many developmental changes that their learning can be inconsistent from day to day.
The next time your middle schooler says, “I don’t get it,” and you see them getting overwhelmed or spinning their wheels, pause and ask yourself these questions:
- Have I actually taught them this concept explicitly?
- If not me, have they had a proper opportunity to learn this from someone else?
- Am I expecting them to know something they haven’t had sufficient chance to practice or understand?
Moving Forward with Understanding in Your Homeschool
As we head into a new homeschool year, this perspective shift feels particularly relevant for families of tweens and pre-teens. This age group presents unique challenges — they’re developing more complex thinking skills but still need scaffolding to make connections between concepts.
When our middle schoolers hit learning walls, our first instinct might be to encourage them to “try harder” or “think more carefully.” But sometimes what they really need is that missing puzzle piece — the explicit teaching that connects the dots they already have.
Tweens are also at an age where they’re becoming more aware of their own learning struggles, which can lead to frustration and even shame. By providing clear, explicit instruction instead of expecting them to figure everything out independently, we can help build their confidence while filling in those crucial knowledge gaps.
This doesn’t mean we should spoon-feed everything or eliminate all productive struggle. But it does mean recognizing when a child needs direct instruction rather than more time to figure things out independently.
Taking Action
If you’re preparing for the upcoming homeschool year and feeling like you could use some clarity on your approach — especially if you’ve got tweens and are facing new academic and emotional challenges — I’m offering power planning sessions over the next couple of weeks.
These 30-minute one-on-one calls focus on what’s working, what isn’t, and what you might need for the year ahead, with special attention to the unique needs of pre-teens and middle schoolers.
We’ll create a practical plan for the next few months — because while you don’t need to know what’s happening nine months from now, you do need clarity for the immediate future. As you grow and things change, you can extend and adapt your plan throughout the year.
You’ll come away with clearer direction and less decision fatigue. If you’re interested, look for available times that work for you, and if you don’t see something suitable, reach out and we can find a solution.
The Bottom Line
That jazz piano struggle taught me something valuable: sometimes our tweens aren’t lacking motivation or effort. They’re missing the explicit teaching that would unlock their understanding. And that’s something we can provide.
The next time you see your pre-teen or middle schooler struggling, remember that they might have all the ingredients they need — they just need someone to show them how those ingredients work together. Sometimes that’s the difference between hours of frustration and a breakthrough moment of understanding.