Adolescents not in Turmoil - Assignment Example

ADOLESCENTS NOT IN TURMOIL, NOT DEEPLY DISTURBED AND NOT RESISTANT TO PARENTAL VALUES The following essays a profile of the contemporary American adolescents who are not in turmoil, not deeply disturbed and not resistant to parental values as still constituting the majority of the adolescent population. This is despite perceptions that the present generation of adolescents has deteriorated to the level of typical deviants and delinquents prone to crime. The following discussions also attempts to bring to fore parental care to be essential, as it is a wonderful privilege for their development as well, during the period of their children’s adolescent years. Adolescence is commonly perceived as that stage of physiological, mental, and emotional development between childhood and adulthood. Generally taken as the “pre-teen” to “teen” ages, usually at the onset of puberty until about 18 or 19, the period of adolescent development pertains to a rather diverse range of determinant influences including social, environmental, religious, even cultural factors for the concept to be framed in more definitive terms. In this paper, the context adopted by the American Psychological Association (A.P.A.) in its scientific publication titled “Developing Adolescents: A reference for Professionals” shall be, likewise, adopted: “There is no standard age range for defining adolescence. Individuals can begin adolescence earlier than age 10, just as some aspects of adolescent development often continue past the age of 18. Although the upper age boundary is sometimes defined as older than 18 (e.g., age 21 or 25), there is widespread agreement that those in the age range of 10 to 18 should be considered adolescents.” (p. 2) The stage of adolescence is definitely the most exciting period of most everyone’s life. The period of discoveries and learning on your own, the time of exciting encounters and relationships, of heightened interests in new and more exciting things than dolls and matchboxes, it is that time in our lives that almost every adult, if not every adult, would look back to with fondness and great relish. It is the period of our lives when we looked at everything in the world with more intense interest and passion. Child psychologist Gregory Ramey at Dayton Children’s in his Dayton Daily News article titled Adolescent Turmoil writes, “Teens feel the world so passionately. They live life differently from the rest of us. They experience intense sadness at things that appear trivial and escalate to extreme excitement at seemingly insignificant events“. He continues further, “They enjoy the excitement of experiencing life in all of its intensity. If they feel depressed, that is simply the cost to also experience life’s euphoria”. The treatment of the subject on adolescence, however, appears to be also usually relative to the travails and troubles that accompany this stage of life. It gives the impression to anyone who cares to pay attention that we are all but survivors of that period called age of adolescence. Most serious of such correlations is the matter-of-course and typical inclusion of adolescent psychology and behavior in most, if not all, crime and criminality studies and treatises. Crime and adolescent delinquency has become a common relative assumption of conditions. It is not uncommon to take on the subject of adolescence with judgmental biases relating it to delinquency, even crime. Criminologist Dr. Thomas R. O’connor in his lecture entitled Moral Development and Developmental Theories of Crime, dedicates a large part on adolescent psychology, largely attributing to that stage of human development circumstances contributory to the commission of crime. Making classical references, he notes, “Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high because Apollo, God of the Sun, would become jealous of someone entering his domain and melt the wax.  But Icarus, exhilarated by being able to soar above the Earth, flies too high, and his wings melt, plunging him into the Hellspont.  Ever since, ‘adolescents’ have been seen as: (a) disobedient toward parents; (b) wanting to ‘fly’ too high; and, in some interpretations, (c) condemned to hell.” That, somehow, reveals a rather ugly prejudice towards adolescents. While juvenile delinquency is indeed a reality that nags even more as the figures in adolescent offender statistics appear to rise, these incidents can not presume the notion that delinquency is or has become the normal predisposition of adolescents. Author of Scapegoat Generation(1996), sociologist Mike A. Males crusades against what he calls the “bogus moral panic” that impute upon America’s youth the propensity to cause serious threats to public safety and peace, to even commit crime. In his Los Angeles Times article The New Demons: Ordinary Teens, Males writes, “In the real world, young people behave better than any generation in decades. Young assailants are not “ordinary” teens any more than serial killer David Berkowitz is an “ordinary Jew” or child-murderer Andrea Yates typifies newly murderous womanhood. Journalists and commentators who claim we’re imperiled by a teen apocalypse rely on isolated cases, a selective morality, historical amnesia and sheer illogic to spin their tale of an entire generation gone bad.” Further in the same article, Males proceeds with statistical data, “L.A. law-enforcement records show youth rape, murder and felony arrest rates today are well below their 1960s levels, when juveniles committed a far higher proportion of serious crime. Five times more “ordinary” (“white”) youths were arrested for murder every year in the 1970s than in 1999 or 2000. The FBI’s 2000 Uniform Crime report estimates youths commit just 5% of the nation’s homicides, the lowest proportion on record.” Adolescents of this generation, in the wonder stage of life like every adult has had in their own, may not be as menacing as adult society perceives them to be after all. They are, like everyone in their lives, going through a stage of development and ripening. And in such period of transformation, the responsible guidance and loving care of those who brought them here should be at hand, accessible, and must be made available for them. That being the case, this period appears to be such that it must be an exciting stage for parenting as well. A dual opportunity for development and relationship building for both children and parents at the same time is at hand in the years of adolescence. Having said that, it must be, therefore, a time for giving and paying attention, for communicating and listening more intently and as intimately, for spending time that has become more scarcely available between parent and child with more enthusiasm and anticipation. It is definitely not the time to water down, much less altogether relinquish, parental care. But even as adolescence is a most natural stage of transition as it is real in every normal human, it is also the stage of most commonly misunderstood manifestations, even for parents themselves. A logical explanation many psychologists and family counselors look at is the fact that by about the time sons and daughters reach adolescence, parents find themselves coping at some stages of their own too – struggling with domestic finances, marital struggles, middle-aging, career concerns and a host of other life issues to contend with. Despite such parallel stages for both parents and children occurring simultaneously, however, nature must have it in itself to provide mechanisms and control factors so that transforming adolescents still end up living their lives within normal behavioral spectrum, albeit more excitingly. Observable behavioral patterns of normal developing teens through early, middle and late adolescence are consistent: movement towards independence, sexual and sexuality awareness that come with physiological development, identity and self-description, self-direction, then career interests. Early adolescence, which occurs at the onset of puberty to about fourteen years old, is characterized by moodiness, struggle with their sense of identity manifested in their experimenting with clothes and their appearance, less attention given to parents, even occasional rudeness as some display of their move towards independence. At this early stage, the girls usually develop physiologically and physically earlier than the boys. Testing the limits or rules is common at this onset. By mid-adolescence, by about age fifteen and sixteen or seventeen, self involvement alternates between the extreme ends of very high expectations and poor self concept. Articulation of complaints about parents’ interference with their independence is common.. Search for newer peer groups is, therefore, typical at this stage. Even frequent change of relations commonly occurs too. By about this stage, intellectual interests gain more importance with the prospect of having to work later to gain independence coming to consciousness. Beyond physical intimacies, feelings of love and passion are beginning to be expressed at this stage. Late adolescence comes by about sixteen or seventeen to eighteen. A firmer sense of identity is already achieved by about this time. Interests are more stable. There is more emotional stability too. Even concern for others begins to develop at this point. Self reliance is more felt with greater confidence. Work habits become more defined. Sexual identity is clearly defined and capacities for tender and sensual love have become more developed. Self esteem and personal dignity begins to be asserted. Actual independent living in the university beckons at this late stage of adolescence. Confronted with the real conditions actual independent living obtains upon entering college, values acquired from parents, prior school or from church can come most relevant at this stage. James Madison University’s Student Affairs and University Planning conduct surveys on incoming freshmen to capture student development profiles. In its September 2003 report, the surveyed disclosed, among other data, that “Three-fourths or more of this year’s survey respondents said they feel that the following are very important: education, friendship, honesty, fulfilling oneself as a person, family and love.” The same survey also notes, though, that “freshmen respondents to the survey continue to be academic achievers who hold traditional values and in general, come from middle-class families.” A more recent survey conducted on freshmen by private entity Noel-Levitz, Inc. also discloses that 95% of entering freshmen bring a “strong desire to complete their education.” The same survey also reveals, however, that only half “enjoy reading, with females enjoying it much more than males”. Apparently a basic condition for any reasonable rate for success to be attained, interestingly the same report says,” The attitudinal findings, juxtaposed against national graduation data, bring to light a sobering disparity: Although the vast majority of today’s first-year students arrive at college really wanting to complete their degrees, only half of them are likely to accomplish their goal.” (National Freshmen’s Attitude Report, 2007). By and large, these survey disclosures only re-affirm the crucial element of parental care during the stage of adolescence as an essential determinant factor in their later successes, or failures, in their adult life. Transformation proceeds for everyone. Some pass with more significant change than others. Some acquire more leveraging experiences along the way than others and some others are drawn to life’s disadvantages by unfortunate unguided or misguided directions. By any empirical reckoning though, majority of the American adolescent population make it through as normal teens in transformation towards adulthood. References: 1. A.P.A, Developing Adolescents: A reference for Professionals, 2002 2. Ramey, Gregory, Phd., Adolescent Turmoil, Dayton Daily News, July 2, 2006 3. OConnor, T., Moral Development and Developmental Theories of Crime, http://www.apsu.edu/oconnort/crim/crimtheory06.htm, Nov. 30, 2006 4. Mike Males, The New Demons: Ordinary Teens, Los Angeles Times, Sunday Opinion, 21 April 2002 5. Gallien, Louis B. Jr., Catechism Redux: What Schools and Churches Need to Revive, Institute of College Student Values, http://www.collegevalues.org/proceedings.cfm?ID=43 6. Noel-Levitz, Inc., 2007 National Freshman Attitudes Report, www.noellevitz.com/freshman 7. FRESHMAN SURVEY, Volume 26, Number 1, September 2003, Student Affairs and University Planning, James Madison University Read More