Adolescence: Growing Up In An Ever-Changing World

Today's topic begins a bit of a series on adolescence and the emerging problems of identity, mental health and illness, and substance abuse.

We often hear people say that adolescence is a period of storm and struggle — you're not a "kid" anymore but you're still not an adult. I tell people that everybody's still growing, but the period of adolescence is noteworthy because the changes are so unprecedented and significant. The word adolescent comes to us from the Latin word adolescere, meaning to grow up. The past participle, adultus, gives us the word adult. Both words are related to Latin forms, meaning to nourish or cause to grow up (it's the prefix, ad, which connotes the upward direction.)

So, when you tell a fifteen-year-old to "grow up," he can rightly respond "I am growing up."

The adolescent years, which begin between 11 and 13 and end between 18 and 21 years of age, are characterized by dramatic changes in physical and mental development. The reason why these ages are given as a range is that the actual changes in growth (a "growth spurt"), sexual maturity (facial hair and menstruation), and cognition (the beginnings of abstract and hypothetical thinking), may occur at different times and in different sequences for each child. In fact, one of the biggest causes of stress during these mostly teenage years is the fact that kids who develop either very early or very late can suffer from social isolation and feel on the outs, because they are outside of the norm.

It's been often said that boys or girls who mature earlier can have an advantage over the rest of their peers.

Boys and girls who mature physically and who possess appropriate social skills are often seen as leaders and are looked up to as trendsetters. When boys or girls mature earlier, they may also suffer social embarrassments from being the object of so much attention from their peers and others, but when they are not yet ready to handle it emotionally. My sense is that we can help all kids to deal with these changes in part by educating them in advance about their emerging bodies and minds and especially by instilling in them a strong sense of self-confidence through all their stages of development.

How do you instill self-confidence in your teenager? In fact, how do you instill anything in your teenager?

The "instill" thing has to begin at the beginning. As parents and adults in a world full of kids we have opportunities every day to listen intently to what our kids are telling us. And we need to remember: everything that they have to say tells us something about themselves and the world that they live in. First we listen, then we comment to let them know that we are listening and then we ask them guiding questions to help them to expand their expressive range and hopefully their understanding of the their universe. Mostly, kids don't need to be told the answers, what they need is to be inspired to discover them for themselves by good listening.

So, how do we deal with questions about morality, values and virtues?

The best way for parents to teach morality is by action. When we try to teach values only with words, these growing minds see right through the contradictions and turn away from us as role models for how to be. One of the primary tasks of adolescence is to choose and forge an identity. Kids look first to us, sometimes to the stars, but mostly they look to each other, to test themselves against the norms of how they can be. This is where experimentation with things like smoking, drinking, drugs and or sex arises: it's partly a rebellion against authority, and partly a response to pressures to join in, but should also be seen as an attempt to jump start their own maturity.

"Why can't I do it?" is what we usually hear.

Restraint and good sense are hard to come by, at any age. When you’re a teenager, the pressures of change itself send you hurtling towards the adult universe and it takes parents with good sense to smooth the way and bring a healthy point of reference to what is certainly an ever-changing landscape.

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