How Adolescent Growth Affects Us
- Adolescents experience rapid physical, cognitive, and psychosocial growth.
- Although considered a healthy stage of life, there is significant death, illness, and injury.
- Self-esteem issues become common during changes.
- Due to hormones, teens are easily swayed and have difficulty making decisions.
- Different pressures may lead to youth staying up longer and can cause sleep deprivation.
- Many neurons grow rapidly during changes in the brain, causing teens to make their own decisions.
- Frontal lobe is one of the last parts of the brain to mature, which doesn’t occur for some until late 20s.
- Risk-taking behaviors increase during adolescence.
- Adolescents are capable of more thought and begin to recognize how they vary from others.
- Self-esteem can be a complex experience.
Parent vs Peer Influence
The four types of parenting style:
Authoritarian: believe kids should follow the rules without exception.
Authoritative: have rules and use consequences, but also take their children's opinions into account.
Permissive: are lenient. They often only step in when there's a serious problem.
Uninvolved: expect children to raise themselves.
Parents should:
Set clear expectations and boundaries helps adolescents understand their roles and responsibilities within the family and society.
Provide a supportive and nurturing home environment can contribute to a sense of self-confidence and self-esteem in their adolescent children.
Peer Influence: Adolescents are highly influenced by their peer group and may adopt behaviors and attitudes that are popular among their friends.
Peer Pressure: Adolescents are heavily influenced by their peers and often feel the need to conform to social norms and expectations in order to fit in.
This results in:
changing the way they talk or the words they use.
doing risky things or breaking rules.
choosing the same clothes, hairstyle or jewelry as their friends.
working harder at school or not working as hard