ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT
THE WONDER OF IT ALL!!!
The Wonder Of It All!!!!
Central Massachusetts Regional Library System
January 23, 2007
10am-1pm
Worcester Public Library
Saxe Room
Joyce Fulmer
Community Coalition for Teens
North Quabbin Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coordinator
34 N. Main Street, Suite 5
Orange, MA 01364
978-544-6912
[email protected]
Introductions
• What’s in a Name? Introduce yourself and
share with the group how you got your
name.
• One thing you are hoping to learn from this
training?
Cognitive Development
• Children think in concrete fashions
• Adolescents begin to develop more adult
fashions of thinking starting at age 12.
• Usually by age 15 this adult cognition is
fairly in place.
Cognitive Development
• The Key Features of Formal Thought are:
– Generate abstractions
– Generate hypothesis
– Consider contrary to fact information
– Generate all possibilities from a specific
situation
– Approach a problem in a systematic fashion
– Use Combinatory Logic
Cognitive Development
• Needs nurturing
• An adult’s body, a child’s mind!
• A realistic self-image
-early adolescence
-middle adolescence
-late adolescence
Physical Development
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Most commonly referred to as puberty
Adult height and weight are reached
Physically capable of having children
Can start as early as 7 or 8
May not start for some until they become
teenagers
Physical Development
• Puberty should take about 3-6 years
• Growth Spurt-regular pace throughout
childhood.
-explosion of growth happens for girls when
they are into puberty about 2 years and for
boys when they are into puberty for 2-3 years
-They grow very rapidly for several months then
growth slows way down
Physical Development
• Girl’s grow taller earlier then boys
• Girl’s start puberty earlier then boys
• Girls are physically mature in general 2
years earlier then boys
• A boy has to go through his “growth spurt”
until he “puts on muscles”.
Physical Development
• Children also develop sexually during puberty
• A girl will usually have her first menstrual period
after her growth spurt
• A boy is able to make sperm by mid puberty
• A boy will also be able to have a nocturnal
emission when is able to produce semen which
will occur about a third or half-way through
puberty
Emotional Development
• Study of Emotional Dev. in children is fairly
new
• Adolescents have become sophisticated at
regulated their emotions
• Adolescents are adept at interpreting
social situation as part of the process of
managing emotional displays
Emotional Development
• Adolescents develop a certain of
expectations
• Children begin to break emotional ties with
parents and develop them with friends
• Boys will start to regulate (hide) their
emotions.
• Adolescents also regulate their emotions
because of their sensitivity to other’s
evaluations of them
Emotional Development
• During adolescence (as early as age
10)….children begin to realize emotions
aren’t as simple as they thought when they
were children
• Boys are less likely to display emotions of
fear as girls are
• Displays of empathy also increase during
adolescence
Social Development
• Begin to form an organized system of
personality traits
• Self concept-allows them to add new aspects of
self-esteem (how they feel about their “self”).
• As confidence and self-awareness rises-they
begin to form self-identity.
• More able to develop friendships that are based
on loyalty and intimacy.
• These social milestones occur slowly over time.
Social Development
• Social time spent with family decreases by about
half from 5th to 9th grade
• Then drops even more from 9th to 12th grade.
• Time spent with friends increases and time
spent alone increases especially for boys.
• One study found that the average time
adolescents spend with their parents was only
28 minutes/day! Time spent with their friends
however was 4 times greater at 103
minutes/day.
Social Development
• Teenagers lean on their parents for their main
source of support until the 7th grade.
• Then they move to not leaning just on their
parents but on their same gender friends for
equal means of support
• By 10th grade they lean more on their same
gender friends then their parents.
• By emerging adulthood (starting around 17-18)
they lean more on their romantic partners for
their main source of support
Social Development
• Provide support to teenagers when they
need it
• Understand that this social development
and how it unfolds is a sign of maturity and
a natural process
• Help them make good academic
decisions, realistic career goals, and plans
for the future
Moral Development
• Moral Development doesn’t develop all at
once.
• Earliest level-is that of a child-(pre
conventional level)
• Second level-level most adolescents
reach-(conventional level)
• Post conventional stage-defines right and
wrong form a universal point of view.
Moral Development
• Many factors can stimulate a person’s
growth through the levels of moral
development.
• One most crucial factor is education
• Studies indicate that a person’s behavior
is influenced by his or her moral
perception and moral judgments.
Moral Development
• Moral issues great us everywhere.
• First step is to get the facts…but facts
alone will not tell us what ought to
be…they only tell us what is.
• Philosophers have developed five different
approaches to values that deal with moral
issues.
Moral Development
The Utilitarian Approach
• Conceived by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart
Mill in the 1900’s to help legislators determine
which laws were morally best
• Using this approach…a person must identify
various courses of action available
• Then ask who will be affected by each action
that will produce the greatest benefit and least
harm
• The ethical action is the one that provides the
greatest good for the greatest number
Moral Development
The Rights Approach
• Rooted in the 18th century by a thinker named Immanuel Kent
• Focused on the individual right to choose for himself or herself
• According to these philosophers, human beings are different from
any other beings because they have dignity based on their ability to
choose freely what they will do with their lives, and they have a
fundamental moral right to have those choices respected. (the right
to truth, privacy, the right not to be injured, the right to what is
agreed).
• In deciding whether an action is moral or immoral using this
approach, then you must ask if the action respects that moral right of
everyone. Actions are wrong if they violate the rights of other, the
more serious the violation, the more wrongful the action
Moral Development
The Fairness or Justice Approach
• Has it’s roots in teachings of Aristotle
• Equals should be treated equally and unequally
should be treated unequally.
• How fair is an action
• Does it treat everyone in the same way or does
it show favoritism and discrimination
• Favoritism and Discrimination are unjust and
wrong
Moral Development
The Common-Good Approach
• Assumes that a society comprising of individuals
whose own good is inextricably linked to the
good of the community.
• Originated in the writings of Plato, Aristotle and
Cicero. Most recently contemporary ethicist John
Rawls defined the common good as “certain
general conditions that are….equally to
everyone’s advantage”
• Focus on ensuring that social policies, social
systems, institutions and environments on which
we depend are beneficial to all.
Moral Development
The Virtue Approach
• Assumes that there are certain ideals towards
which we should strive, which will provide for the
full development of our humanity.
• Discovered through thoughtful reflection on what
kind of people we have the potential to be
• In dealing with an ethical problem using the
virtue approach, we might ask, What kind of
person should I be? What will promote the
development of character within myself and my
community
Moral Development
What the Five Approaches Suggest
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Once we have the facts, we should ask
ourselves five questions to resolve a moral
issue
1. What benefits and what harms will each course of action
produce, and which alternative will lead to the best overall
consequences?
2. What moral rights do the affected parties have, and which
course of action best respect those rights?
3. Which course of action treats everyone the same, except
where there is morally justifiable reason not to, and does
not show favoritism or discrimination
4. Which course of action advances the common good
5. Which course of action develops moral virtues?
Moral Development
• Of course the last few slides about the
approaches to values and moral decisions
doesn’t provide anyone with an automatic
solution to moral problems. It is not meant to.
The method is merely meant to help identify
most of the important ethical considerations. In
the end each individual including adolescents
must deliberate on moral issues for themselves
keeping an eye on both the facts and on the
ethical considerations involved.
Early Adolescence(12-14)
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Rapid Growth
Confused by changes
Curious about final outcome
Personal interest in their own development
Rebellion against home
Acts in way that looks to be considerable
maturity and in the next moment
babyishness
Early Adolescence(12-14)
• Absorption with close friends of same age and
gender
• Moodiness
• Sloppiness and Disorder
• Establishment of independence of self: Who am
I?
• Body-conscious
• Strong desire to conform to and be accepted by
peer group
• Appearance of Sexual Maturity
• Skin problems
Early Adolescence(12-14)
• Constantly hungry (more than in younger
years)
• Companionship at meals and after school
snacks provide dining pleasures)
• Sleeps more than during younger years
• Sleepy at “getting up” times
• Wants to sit up at nights as sign of
increasing maturity
• Clash between physiology and culture
Early Adolescence(12-14)
Special Characteristics of Boys
• Boisterous
• Clumsy
• Secretive, “clams up” especially around adults or
at home
• Aggressive
• Dirty-can’t seem to get him near the bathroom
• Gain more weight and height than girls
• Much talk about sex and girls
• Out of house more
Early Adolescence (12-14)
Special Characteristics of Girls
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Vague and diffuse
Crush on older men
Interested in romantic love
Playacting
Talkative, but not communicative
Giggly!
Early Adolescence
Sexuality
• Boys express their sexuality through
masturbation
• Same-gender sexual encounters are relatively
common
• These occur frequently enough to be considered
as a variant of normal sexual development
• Questions that adolescents have about erotic
feelings or behaviors toward the same sex need
to be addressed directly and fully.
• It is not helpful…to just say…this is no more
then a passing phase.
Middle Adolescence (15-16)
• Greatest experimental, risk taking time
• Drinking, drugs, smoking and sexual experimentation are
often highest interest during the 14-16 years olds
• Peer groups gradually give way to one-on-one
friendships and romances
• Peer groups tends to be gender-mixed
• Dating begins
• Less conformity and more tolerance of individual
differences
• Omnipotence and Invulnerability are the rule
• This results in an inability to link drinking with auto
accidents or drinking with pregnancy or STD’s
Middle Adolescence (15-16)
• Striving for independence and autonomy is
greatly increased
• Parental conflicts occur which need
confrontation and resolution (these are normal
and necessary)
• Adolescents confide in each other
• Sexual development results in unpredictable
surges in sexual drive
• Often accompanied by sexual fantasies
• Sexuality is a MAJOR preoccupation of the
middle adolescent
Middle Adolescence (15-16)
• Sexual activity occurs more frequently among
boys than girls
• Testosterone increases are found in both boys
and girls but much more abundant in boys
• Higher testosterone levels in boys may result in
greater sexual drives, sexual aggressiveness
and more purely physical gratifications
• Girls at this age tend to view sexual gratification
as secondary to fulfillment of other needs such
as love, affection, self-esteem and reassurance
Late Adolescence (17-18)
• Rebellious
• Concerned with personal appearance (can’t get
them out of the bathroom)
• Moody
• Interest in the opposite gender
• Establishment of ego identity-”where do I fit into
the world”
• Growth finally subsided
• Full stature almost attained
• Sleep requirements approaching adult level
Late Adolescence(17-18)
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Food requirement approaching adult level
Companionship when eating
Intimate relation with friend fades
Greater interest in opposite gender
Needs acceptance by society, in job and in
college
• Needs parental respect for opinion and
acceptance of maturity
Late Adolescence(17-18)
• “Whom am I as a vocational being?”
• Work opportunities during these years
allow exploration of tentative career
choices
• A choice of vocation reinforces the
adolescent’s self-concept and is important
to identify formation
Late Adolescence (17-18)
Factors Influencing vocational choice:
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Family values
Social class
Socioeconomic conditions
Need for prestige
Vocational Independence
Special Abilities
Motivation
Late Adolescence (17-18)
Special Characteristics of Boys
• Interest in plans for career
• Sexual interest prominent and
demanding
• Less interested than girls in
mate seeking
Late Adolescence (17-18)
Special Characteristics of Girls
• Interest in boys, now directed towards
mate seeking
• Absorbed in fantasies of romantic love
• Less interested than boys in plans for
career
• Sexual interest less demanding than in
boys
Professionals Working With
Adolescents
SMALL GROUP WORK
Issues that Teens Often Face
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Alcohol and Drug Use
Injuries
Sexual Behaviors
Tobacco Use
Skin Cancer
Food Safety and Adolescents
Nutrition
Physical Activity
Terrorism
Youth Violence