Being a young teenager is not easy; neither is living with a young teenager. No other period of development generates as much fear and anxiety in parents as the new adolescent. Surly, confused, oppositional, and often withdrawn, the early adolescent often seems an unfortunate replacement for the easygoing and cooperative child of the previous developmental stage. Adolescence is demanding and difficult. It is a time of accelerated physical, sexual, social, cognitive, and emotional development. One of life’s greatest challenges is being navigated — the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Physical Development
Physical and hormonal changes are noticeable, often painfully so. Early pubertal changes — pubic hair, breasts, and menarche for girls, increased genital size, facial and body hair for boys — are both anticipated and dreaded. Adults often forget the confusion felt by adolescents as they shed their childhood bodies. Remember how you felt during those years?
A twelve-year old girl is unable to complete her homework because she spends three hours in the bathroom trying to figure out how to insert a tampon. A thirteen-year old boy finds himself unable to concentrate in school fearful that his erection will be noticed if he is called to the front of the classroom. While physical changes are the most conspicuous, they are really only the tip of the adolescent iceberg.
Changes in peer relationships, family relationships, cognitive abilities, self-concept, and social roles all conspire to keep the young adolescent off-center and preoccupied. Coupled with the unrelenting physical changes of early adolescence is the need for remarkable emotional adjustment. Perhaps the most noticeable shift occurs around issues of autonomy and self-determination. The anthem of adolescence has many variations, but essentially it is some form of “Leave me alone,” “Don’t tell me what to do,” “You can’t run my life anymore.” What was your pet peeve? Children who just a few months ago were cheerful and compliant suddenly are resentful and provocative.
While the notion that adolescence must include extremely high levels of parent-child conflict in order for the child to become fully independent has been discredited, there is little disagreement that mild to moderate levels of parent-child conflict, particularly in early adolescence is typical. Parents are being forced to step aside and are most frequently replaced by the adolescent’s peers. For many parents, this conflict and withdrawal is particularly painful, coming at a time when middle-age is imposing its own developmental challenges for the adults.
While it is true that the young adolescent experiences periods of increased conflict, the cultural commonplace view that “teenagers are crazy” has been shown to be an inaccurate and potentially dangerous misconception. Both the professional and popular perspective has encouraged the point of view that adolescence is a period of disequilibrium unmatched in the human life cycle. The term “storm and stress,” was popularized in 1904 by G. Stanley Hall, the father of American psychology, to describe adolescence. Research over the past several decades has helped to clarify what is and what is not expectable adolescent behavior.
Although early adolescence is a time of particular sensitivity and rather characteristic behaviors (withdrawal, moodiness, self-absorption), the vast majority of young teenagers pass through this stage of development without exhibiting major psychological or emotional disorders. As a group, adolescents have no more and no less emotional illness that any other age group. Approximately 20% of all teenagers suffer from clinical-level symptoms — that is, symptoms such as anxiety or depression that are of significant severity and duration to warrant a diagnosis and treatment. This rate is comparable to adult rates of emotional illness. Teenagers can be moody, anxious, and depressed. They tend to suffer from feelings of self-doubt and inferiority. However, should these feelings be intense and unremitting, it is likely that the teenager needs psychological help. Teenagers do not “grow out of” true depression or anxiety disorders any more than adults do.
Although not emotionally ill, adolescents can appear idiosyncratic to adults because of their constant attempts to define and refine their identities. Low-riding “skater pants,” dark hooded sweatshirts, and pierced noses all seem foreign and a bit forbidding to parents. However, adults need to be cautious and not overinterpret these superficial signs of nonconformity. Although certain aspects of dress or appearance, such as “wearing colors” to show gang affiliation, can signal real danger, the vast majority of adolescent indulgences in dress and appearance are harmless and short-lived.
This does not mean that parents have to like or sanction all adolescent excesses. One of the major developmental tasks of adolescence is to develop a new and enduring identity. Many hats must be tried on before the teenager finds one that fits. Pick your battles carefully.
The task of adolescence is to begin creating a new adult. There are periods of intense exhilaration as well as abiding anxiety and depression both for teenagers and their families. Power relationships that were carefully forged over the past twelve years are obsolete. Parents are often at a loss as to how to relate to this “new” family member. Unfortunately, parents frequently fall back on trying to reassert their previous authority and as a result become over-restrictive. Typically, this parenting approach backfires. Authoritarian households are found to have higher rates of delinquency than more democratic households.
The adolescent’s task is to develop an emerging identity; the parent’s task is to allow greater freedom without sacrificing the child’s physical safety or mental health. One of the most common ways that adolescents work on their emerging identity is by spending a significant amount of time daydreaming. Teenagers of 12, 13, and 14 spend lots of time alone in their rooms. Intrusion is discouraged by a variety of signs, locks, and offensive posters. While staring into space, teenagers are crafting the individuals they are about to become. Early adolescence is a period of intense self-doubt.
Attachment
The young adolescent’s moves towards independence are often erratic and tumultuous. While there is great striving toward becoming an individual, there is also a great sense of sadness for the loss of childhood security. This process of separation, of “growing up,” is often met with both joy and sadness for parent and child alike. Becoming an adult demands becoming independent of one’s parents. This demand is at the heart of much of the conflict between young adolescents and their parents. To some degree, adolescents need to reject their families in order to forge their own identity. Parents are challenged, ignored, and endlessly criticized during adolescence. Those parents who understand the reasons and the temporary nature of this disruption in family relations are in a much better position to help their children (and themselves) pass through this demanding and often difficult period. It is important that parents not take their young adolescents’ squawking too personally. No matter how good and close a relationship you have had with your child, no matter how liberal or conservative or apolitical your point of view is, no matter how well you dress, or how much you know, your adolescent is driven to find fault with you. It helps teenagers to know that grown-ups have faults. Painfully aware of their own shortcomings, adolescents find solace in the fact that one does not have to be perfect in order to be an adult. Being critical of their parents also allows adolescents to consider other adult points of view: “My coach said…,” “My teacher said…” While parents may feel displaced by their teenagers’ sudden reliance on other sources of authority, it is an important advance for teenagers to expand their horizons and draw from other role models.
Teenagers, like the toddlers they were some ten years earlier, are essentially explorers. Early adolescence is a crucial turning point in development; attitudes that will be carried into adulthood are being formed and consolidated. Parents and educators now need to appreciate the power of influence as opposed to control. Influence takes more time and tact than “Because I said so.” The judicious use of influence provides young adolescents with a model for a more respectful and adult way of dealing with others.
Contrary to popular belief, study after study has shown that adolescents crave more, not less, discussion with their parents. Try to be open and non-judgmental to the topics they want to discuss!
Cognitive Development
Young adolescents are in the middle of the second great revolution in thinking — the ability to think abstractly. Adolescent thinking approaches the level of adult thinking. Teenagers are long past seeing things only in “black and white.” They are able to understand symbols and to see that people may have motives that are not readily apparent. They can think about the past, the present, and the future. Their thinking is no longer limited to their own point of view. They can begin to make formal, logical arguments. This is what Piaget termed the stage of “formal operations.”
Adolescents are great debaters. They argue about their clothes, their allowance, their homework, their curfew, their responsibilities, and just about anything else. This is irritating for parents, but is a testimony to the young adolescent’s growing intellectual ability.
The adolescent mind takes nothing for granted, a necessary precursor to the ability to think clearly and scientifically. Young adolescents are full of ideas, and to the extent that they are free to indulge their thinking at home, parents are in a better position to monitor and encourage their intellectual development. Home becomes a training ground in which young adolescents can develop positions, resist coercion, and become independent thinkers. Encouraging debate and discussion at home lays the groundwork for young adults who think independently, who can resist the pressure of the crowd, and who are able to stand by moral decisions even if they are unpopular.
Young adolescents are new to the world of ideas. The connection between theory and practice is fragile and will take many years to solidify. The idealism of adolescence is a precursor to social action. Don’t expect too much practical application from teenagers yet, but encourage thinking about social issues. Teach action through your own involvement in good causes.
Moral Development
Along with the revolution in thinking that young adolescents are experiencing is a revolution in moral development. Young adolescents are able to appreciate that people and their motives are complicated. The hallmark of this stage of moral development is an increased capacity for caring and cooperation. Young adolescents are able to consider the point of view of the group, whether it be their peer group, parents, school, or society at large. Follow the blog post www.DailyGood.org for some great examples.
Unlike younger children, adolescents want to be good, not only to please those in authority or because they have something to gain, but because they now have an internalized image of a “good person” and strive to live up to it. They benefit from living up to this image in two ways: They think well of themselves (self-approval), and others think well of them (social approval). Together, these two types of approval can boost self-esteem and help young adolescents create a more altruistic and responsible sense of self.
Just as we saw the demise of “black and white” thinking in young adolescence, so do we see the end of severe moral judgment. At this stage, teenagers are more forgiving and flexible in their moral judgment because they are able to consider extenuating circumstances and to understand that people’s motivations can be quite complex.
Given this significant shift in moral reasoning, who do young adolescents seem so critical of their families?
What is this crazy dichotomy that allows young adolescents to empathize with friends’ major flaws while at the same time being so hypervigilant and critical of their family’s minor or imagined flaws?
During the childhood years, it is primarily parents who supply the role models for appropriate, caring behavior. This changes in adolescence, when the demands of creating an individual separate from the family force a temporary withdrawal and even a renunciation of family attitudes, behaviors, and values. The peer group often replaces the family as the most important transmitter of attitudes and behavior. At this stage, being accepted by other kids becomes a full-time job and often a preoccupation.
Even though there may be conflict between parents and young teenagers, this does not reflect an undoing of the previous twelve years of childrearing. If parents have been successful in laying the foundation of clear moral values in early childhood, their young adolescents are better able to benefit from exposure to different values and to withstand the pressure of their peers when those values conflict with their own. Parents need to help their young adolescents feel good about themselves by maintaining a healthy and positive relationship with the family and by providing acceptance and love in the face of adolescent insecurity. They need to further their young adolescents’ moral development by actively modeling what they believe to be moral behavior.
Adolescents are very critical of hypocrisy. Parents need to balance their teenagers’ need for control and independence with adult experience and judgment. A good rule of thumb is to say “yes” when you can and “no” when you must…