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Normal Young Adolescent Development: Truth or Fiction (Answers)
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See reference article, "Facts about 10- to 15-year-olds," in the RESOURCES section. The answers are cross-referenced to the facts as listed in that section.
Physical
- Adolescents who are early physical developers will be more socially and emotionally mature than late physical developers.
F - Developmental diversity is the hallmark of adolescence. Physical development is not synchronized and does not translate into proportionate emotional maturity, and vice versa. (Fact 2)
- Human beings grow more rapidly during the adolescent growth spurt than at any other time in their lives except infancy.
T - Adolescents grow from child to adult bodies. There are three kinds of growing during this time span: i) height and weight; ii) primary sex characteristics; iii) secondary sex characteristics. (Fact 6)
- It is abnormal for an 11-year-old girl to have begun to menstruate.
F - Menstruation may begin as early as nine years or as late as fifteen. The average age is 121/2 (see Table 1, p.89).
- In general, adolescents who enter puberty at an early age will also go through the events of puberty more rapidly than late developers.
T - Puberty involves the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics and generally those who begin later have a more lengthy period of puberty. (Fact 8)
Social
- The normal variation in young adolescent physical development means that there maybe at least a six-year span between a slowly developing boy and a rapidly developing girl of the same chronological age.
T - Developmental diversity is also true of social, cognitive, moral and faith development. When we know the age of an adolescent, that is all we know. Individual body clocks differ and adolescents differ from one to another within a group. (Fact 9)
- Adolescence is characteristically a stormy period marked by outright rebellion.
F - Young adolescents are essentially alleviative. Adolescence is a time to renegotiate rules and boundaries, not to abandon them. (Fact 14)
- The proportion of adolescents who show signs of serious disturbance and inability to function normally is much greater than the percentage of adults who show these signs.
F - One in five adults shows serious signs of disturbance; the same percentage is true of adolescents. (Facts 16, 17)
- One sign of serious disturbance in young people is the inability to relate to peers and to fit into a peer group.
T - Social involvement is a healthy aspect of adolescents. The inability to relate to peers is different from choosing to have only a few friends. (Fact 20)
- Peer pressure is a pervasive, all powerful, negative force, to which adolescents are subject.
F - Peers can make a positive contribution to identity formation in adolescents. They can learn social skills, try on roles and learn the boundaries of risking and joking through friendly feedback. (Fact 20)
- One sign of serious disturbance in young adolescents is a preoccupation with conformity to others in their peer group and their desire not to be too different.
F - Conforming is entirely normal in early adolescence. Identity is rooted externally in significant groups. Adolescents are beginning to be conscious of others’ perception of their behavior. (Fact 24)
- Young adolescents look to their parents for affection, acceptance, values and guidance.
T - Adolescents look to peers for companionship, and norms around dress, music and entertainment. They look to families for affection, values and help in decision making. Although the influence of peers increases, parents do not lose the primary influence. (Fact 27)
- Young adolescents do not like, enjoy or seek the company of adults.
F - Adolescents need some autonomy, but also seek out adult relationships, other than their parents. Positive role models are very significant at this age level. (Facts 27, 30)
- Periods of disequilibrium are typical in families, as young teenagers and parents work out mutually acceptable ways to accommodate teens’ new concerns and parents’ continuing sense of responsibility.
T - Although it is disturbing, the changing boundaries in the family is normal and healthy. (Fact 28)
- When young adolescents request increasing levels of autonomy areas such as dress, curfew and selection of friends, they are really asking for complete independence from adults.
F - Adolescents have more desire for privacy and autonomy, but need parents to continue to provide structure and limits. (Fact 31)
Cognitive and Moral
- Young adolescents are not mature enough to make commitments to people, ideas or projects.
F - Young adolescents are eager to commit. They need short-term commitments with exits. They need to learn how to be responsible in making commitments. Short-term commitments that can be achieved allow them to feel good about the process. (Fact 32)
- The ability to think about possibilities outside one's immediate environment is a new thinking skill that gradually emerges during young adolescence.
T - Adolescents begin to reason abstractly and consider the possibilities beyond their experience. (Fact 35)
- Adolescents who are capable of mature thought about social justice, religion or higher mathematics also ought to be able to easily comprehend the risks involved in sexual intercourse without contraception or in drug experimentation.
F - Adolescents still have one foot in the world of concrete experience and they are inconsistent in their performance. (Fact 36)
- Young adolescents’ questioning of formally accepted rules and beliefs is a sign that they are using their new cognitive abilities.
T - Adolescents are capable of realizing that not everyone thinks the same way. They see inconsistencies and are able to formulate alternatives. This is a very healthy aspect of development that is frustrating for adults. (Fact 37)
- Young adolescents are often very authoritarian because they are not yet able to see the "gray areas" between right and wrong.
T - Adolescents’ sense of justice is yet to be tempered by mercy. They do not conceive of nuances, and exceptions. (Fact 38)
- With the onset and mastery of abstract thinking (formal operations), young adolescents are able for the first time to relate their present interests and aspirations to vocational, social and cultural roles they will fulfill in the future.
T - Adolescents need time for visioning and dreaming about the future. They should not be forced to choose, but encouraged to try on roles. (Fact 39)
- It is normal for young adolescents to appear to be self-centered and preoccupied with themselves sometimes, often to the exclusion of thoughts or concerns about others.
T - Two forms of "ego-centrism" are linked to this age: i) the imaginary audience is the sense that everyone is watching and judging and that the adolescent is always at the center of everyone's attention; ii) the personal fable is the story that adolescents tell about themselves that center on their own importance. It is also the source of their feeling that nobody else understands them and can be linked to dangerous behavior resulting from feelings of invincibility. (Fact 40)
- Adolescents usually know and understand the possible consequences of behaviors such as driving or riding in a speeding car, engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse or hitchhiking on a busy highway.
F - Adolescents are not strongly consequence oriented. They are very rooted in their experience. Coupled with the feeling of invincibility, this can lead to taking dangerous risks. (Fact 41)
Faith
- Adolescents are beginning to construct their faith interpersonally.
T - They are reforming their childhood image of God They are open to more personal forms of prayer and ritual, and become more reflective. Their faith is strongly tied to their relationships in the faith community.
- Parents have little influence on the faith development of adolescents.
F - The most positive human influence on formation is offered by families and significant others, who are living and expressing their faith.
- Young adolescents reflect critically on their beliefs and values and form their own independent faith perspective.
F - Young adolescence is more of a time for active participation in the life of the faith community. Young adolescents are affiliative. They believe where they belong.
From: Gayle Dorman, 3:00 to 6:00: Planning Programs for Young Adolescents. Center for Early Adolescents, 1985.
© 1996 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society PECUSA
This article is from Handbook for Ministries with Young Adolescents, a publication of the Ministries with Young People Cluster of the Episcopal Church Center, New York, NY. Permission is granted for congregational use and use by diocesan youth coordinators. You may order this resource from Episcopal Parish Services.
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