Coping Through Adolescence - By: Justin Davis

Adolescence stage is a rigorous part that should not be taken lightly. Individuals who are at this phase in their lives are still searching for their identities and often get confused because of the influence of their families. The identity of their parents is what the people around them know them for.

For example, a father working as a carpenter and whom people go to when they need to have some things built at home. In a matter of months, this father's name will be associated with carpentry. Before, the father's occupation becomes a family name of the entire family.

He is known to the entire community as a carpenter. This practice is actually where the family names "Carpenter" or "Mason" came about. However, if the son chooses something other than carpentry as his vocation, this becomes very challenging since he needs to build his own name.

When a person is still young the frontal lobes of his brain, which are associated with thought processes that involve deep thought and reflection, are not yet totally developed according to science. That's why a child does not think about his future.

This is also the part works when a person is thinking about the consequences of his actions. And it is for this reason that adolescents are known for being reckless with their decisions and the legal system imposes age limits for marriage and drinking alcohol. Hence, the reasons behind the need to guide an adolescent every step of the way through his growth are not only psychological but, most importantly, scientific.

Many psychologists have attempted to understand this part of adolescents. This stage is termed as Individuation which describes this stage of teenagers. This is when he begins to seek his own identity and becomes very curious.

Because of this, parents who are preventing their adolescent children from exploring the world are not actually doing their own kids good. To allow the young ones to grow up naturally, they have to be allowed to enjoy the things that attract their interest as long these do not put them in any form of psychological or physical danger. Most importantly, their social skills must be allowed to develop naturally by allowing them to mingle with other people.
Parents of teenagers soon realize that they can feel desperately outmatched by the power that peers seem to gain over a child. Children feel peer pressure and other influence at early ages. By middle school, peer influence may overcome attempts by parents to teach responsibility and respect. Parents may become anxious and feel helpless and scared at the apparent loss of a teenager to the whims of a weird and possibly unsafe adolescent culture.
Some parenting experts claim peers have more influence than parents over the habits of teenagers, others maintain parents are still more influential. The bottom line for parents of teenagers is that you need to stay connected, because research strongly indicates parents have a much greater impact on the development of teenage character and values than do his or her peers. This can be extremely challenging for many parents, who struggle for knowledge and focus to deal with the myriad of teenage issues, including school, sleep-overs, dating, driving, Internet safety, drinking, sex, drugs, and of course, tattoos and piercings.

About the Author

If you're always worried about the negative influences your child might be exposed to in a regular school, why not enroll him in a therapeutic boarding school for adolescents? Otherwise known as alternative boarding schools, these facilities follow a curriculum that is specially designed for students of this age. Hence, you can be assured that your children are in safe hands through this sensitive period in the

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