The ‘Missing Middle’: Kids 6-12 Need a Strategy for Boosting Their Well-Being

Steigman & Haspel: Brain development doesn’t take a breather in middle childhood. Neither should support for kids in the 'forgotten years.'

By Philip Steigman & Elliot Haspel

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

For understandable reasons, a great deal of time and energy around improving child outcomes focuses on either the crucial early years or tumultuous adolescence. Yet there is a missing middle: specifically, a missing middle of childhood. Elementary-aged children, those from 6 to 12, are facing challenges — fueled by unprecedented technological influences — researchers, practitioners and policymakers are only beginning to fully understand. These trials are causing social, emotional and developmental struggles that often go unseen, yet affect everything from learning to mental health. It is more important than ever that those focused on child and family well-being develop a strategy to fill in the missing middle.

There is a persistent misunderstanding that child development mainly occurs through “sensitive periods” of brain plasticity. While these are neurobiological realities and concentrate in the early and teen years, development doesn’t take a breather from ages 6 to 12. In middle childhood, what some researchers call the forgotten years, the brain is fine-tuning itself for the what’s ahead. It trims away unused connections and strengthens the ones children use most, making thinking more efficient. Messages travel faster along these pathways, helping kids focus, remember and manage their impulses. This is also when brain systems for planning, problem-solving and getting along with others grow stronger, laying the foundation for the more complex learning and relationships of adolescence.

But kids this age are grappling with rising rates of anxiety and depression, unrelenting social-media pressure and even the lure of artificial intelligence “friends” that can replace real-world connection. Pediatricians and teachers are sounding the alarm: Kids who used to skip into school are now dragging their feet, weighed down by worry.

What’s happening?

A few things. The pandemic left lasting scars. Children lost classrooms, playgrounds, routines, even relatives. Emergency room visits for mental health crises jumped 24%. Surrounding these impacts are the digital deluge. Heavy social media use is driving up depression, anxiety and isolation. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warns of an “epidemic of loneliness” later in adolescence — and the signs are already cropping up in elementary school. These elementary years are, true to their name, foundational. Socially, emotionally and academically, this is when lifelong patterns are formed. But kids this age don’t always show their struggles the way teens do. Their worries often go unspoken.

This isn’t just about protecting the middle years of childhood. It makes little sense to invest billions in the early years while limiting the impact of those investments once kids enter elementary school. And it makes no sense to wait until adolescence to try to reconnect with young people who have fallen off track when it’s far easier to keep kids flourishing all the way though. Investing in middle childhood is both worthy on its own merits and a form of prevention, keeping the pipeline strong from early learning through graduation.

But here’s the hopeful part: Researchers and practitioners know what works.

Decades of research show children in this age band thrive when they have safe environments, consistent relationships with caring adults and engaging opportunities to learn and play. These ingredients can’t be confined to classrooms alone. They require a community effort.

That means parents, teachers, coaches, librarians, pediatricians, afterschool staff and neighbors all pulling in the same direction. It means building out shared practices and norms: daily check-ins where kids feel seen, pediatric visits that include questions about friendships, mentors who know how to spot early warning signs, even small gestures — like a friendly “How’s school going?” — that remind children that they matter.

But for this to happen, middle childhood must be on the policy agenda. That means building smoother transitions from early learning into elementary school and from elementary into middle school, and making before- and after-school programs, summer learning and enrichment universally available for elementary-age kids, not a privilege dependent on a family’s zip code. It also means ensuring the adults who regularly interact with this age group have the training, time and support to nurture social, emotional and cognitive growth alongside academics. If adults are caught in a whirlwind of scarcity and stress, children in the missing middle are more likely to be ignored.

Expanding the agenda is ambitious, but not unrealistic. The nation has done it before. From expanding early nutrition programs to launching Early Head Start classrooms to now passing widespread restrictions on cellphone usage during the school day, society has acted boldly for children when science and the moment demanded it. When researchers learned how toxic stress harms babies’ brains, communities responded — with warmth, conversation and responsive care. Today, communities and policymakers are actively responding to the damage it is now clear social media can wreak on adolescent brains.

Child and family stakeholders know how to mobilize  —  and need to again in order to activate communities’ collective understanding and response. Kids going through middle childhood deserve nothing less. As Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, put it with regard to children’s mental health struggles: “We cannot sit idly by.”

Let’s not.