Insights from Irine Schweitzer, Psy.D, LCSW
Before puberty, most children have established a fairly reliable manner of dealing with the world. With the onset of puberty, this stability is lost. Adolescents find that they have to begin anew, renegotiate peer and familial relationships, discover who they are again and find a direction for the future.
During this stage, teens:
- Discover that girls are roughly two years ahead of boys physically (until age 15 or 16)
- Acquire a new way of thinking, moving from literal to abstract
- Find their social world to be either the focus of their existence or the bane of their existence
- Rely on friendship, with its emphasis on concern, compassion and empathy for others, to help balance the pull to focus on self
- Agonize, analyze, and struggle with self identity, trying to answer the question, “Who am I?”
- Experiment with many external roles, while questioning, “Is this really who I am or want to be?”
- Begin to see parents are real people, complete with foibles, inconsistencies and bad habits
Resources for parenting a teenager
Book: How to Talk So Teens Will Listen & Listen So Teens Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Oldie but goodieT
To learn more on specialized parenting topics, see also Irine’s Resources page.
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