Three Things You Didn’t Know About Teens
Sociologist Christine Carter has an interesting piece culled from her conversation with scientific expert on adolescence Ron Dahl, regarding insights about teens (and pre-teens). Highlights below, with the whole article at this link.
#1: Your adolescent isn’t a teenager.
- Dahl avoids the term “teenager” because it implies that all the action only after the age of 13.
- Puberty typically lasts only two to four years, with most at the end of puberty by the age of 13.
- Today kids have a longer period of time to figure out who they are, to develop skills, to go to school.
- With puberty starting so early, and kids facing a very prolonged adolescence, when should children take on more adult roles?
#2: Kids don’t necessarily want to feel happy.
- Individual wants differ dramatically; many people like to experience righteous anger; other people would do anything to avoid feeling their own anger.
- Teenage boys typically want to feel a range of emotions intensely.
- We all know people who are “adrenaline junkies”.
- Brain imaging studies show that pre-adolescent boys love disgust.
- Data show that most people do prefer happiness and positive emotions to unhappiness and negative feelings, it is naïve to think that we all want to feel happy all the time.
#3: Puberty makes many kids seek conflict—and this is a good thing.
- When pubescent kids are sad, instead of trying to cajole them out of it, let them learn that they can cope with even very intense negative emotions. Let them listen to sad music, call their most sad friend, and watch a movie that makes them cry. Let them deepen their sadness so that they can practice recovering from it.
- Most pubescent kids like turning up the volume on their own feelings, even if their feelings aren’t positive. Even intense sadness can be novel and exciting for kids.
- Part of the developmental task of teenagers is to learn how to control their intense emotions. So experimenting with intense feelings is adaptive—it’s a way to learn how to cope with them.