Before you read this page:

Complete the questions in Section I: "Normal Young Adolescent Development: Truth or Fiction?"
Listed below are facts about normal development during young adolescence that youth workers need to know. There are also questions for thought and discussion.

Fact 1
Ten- to 15-year-olds are experiencing dramatic physical, cognitive, social, and emotional changes that pervade their lives and often perplex them and the youth workers who work with them.

Fact 2
Growth in each area (physical, cognitive, social, and emotional) occurs in a somewhat characteristic sequence for most young adolescents. However, growth in the four areas does not occur exactly at the same time. For example, early physical developers do not always demonstrate early intellectual and social growth.

Fact 3
Individual young adolescents change at different rates, according to highly individual internal "clocks." For example, a 13-year-old who looks like a young woman or man is as “normal” as peers who are beginning to mature physically, and a 14-year-old concrete thinker is as normal as a 14-year-old who uses formal operations rather expertly.

Fact 4
One look at almost any group of young adolescents provides ample evidence of the normal variation in physical development among the age group. Watching individual 10 to 15-year-olds go through the adolescent-growth spurt and blossom into young men and women within a matter of several months provides evidence of the dramatic and rapid physical changes that occur during young adolescence.

Fact 5
Changes in physical appearance are the most striking aspects of physical development, but invisible changes also take place. Three kinds of physical changes occur during young adolescence: (1) the adolescent growth spurt; (2) the development of primary sex characteristics; (3) and the appearance of secondary sex characteristics.

Fact 6
Adolescence is a period in life when people grow more rapidly than at any other time in their lives except infancy. For girls, this rapid growth spurt usually begins at age 10 1/2, with the peak occurring at about age 12. The growth spurt for boys begins about a year later, at around age 11 1/2 and peaks at around age 14.

Question for Thought and Discussion
Girls usually begin the adolescent growth spurt before boys and on the average, girls hit the peak of their growth spurt two years before boys hit their peak. How does this fact affect the way boys and girls of the same chronological age relate to each other?

Fact 7
It is also during young adolescence that the reproductive system matures, making it possible to conceive and bear children. The changes necessary to prepare girls’ and boys’ bodies to produce offspring are called primary sex characteristics. For girls, the marker event is the beginning of the menstrual cycle. For boys, the marker events are genital growth and the first ejaculation. There is a wide variation in the ages at which these events begin to occur for individual girls and boys.

Fact 8
In general, adolescent who enter puberty at an early age will also go through the events of puberty more rapidly. Those adolescents who begin their development at a later age will have a more lengthy period of development.

Fact 9
The normal variation in young adolescent physical development means that there may be a six to eight-year span in physical development between a slowly developing boy and a rapidly developing girl of the same chronological age.

Fact 10
Most young adolescents are excited by the body changes (or the expected body changes) that make them look more adult. At the same time, they are concerned about whether their bodies are "normal" and about how they will look when their bodies mature. It is easy to talk about the events of puberty in an academic fashion until we think back to our own adolescence and remember how a nose that was too big, breasts that would not grow, pimples, or lack of athletic prowess seemed to turn all of life sour.

Question for Thought and Discussion
What should young adolescents be told about the physical changes they and their peers are going through? What content should be included in human sexuality education programs?

Fact 11
Young adolescence is a period of great change and growth, altering the expectations that others hold for adolescents. When adolescents begin to show signs of physical growth, adults tend paradoxically to expect both mature social and emotional behavior and the rebellion, storm, and stress that our society has come to associate with adolescence.

Question for Thought and Discussion
How do adults’ conflicting expectations for both "mature" behavior and rebellion, storm, and stress affect young adolescents?

Fact 12
As they pass through puberty, young people see themselves differently when they experience adults’ altered expectations, look in the mirror, and feel their body changes. This alteration in self-image and their increased self-consciousness mean that adolescents view themselves and their relationships to others in a new way.

Question for Thought and Discussion
How do the physical changes of puberty affect the way young adolescents feel about themselves and how they relate to other people? How do these changes affect the way others relate to them?

Fact 13
Adjusting to dramatic body changes and altered (and sometimes conflicting) expectations from others makes young adolescents especially vulnerable to bouts of low self-esteem, moodiness, and intense emotionalism.

Fact 14
Although news media reports, public opinion, and popular songs, movies, and books convey the impression that adolescence is characteristically a period of storm, stress, and outright rebellion, research reveals that the social and emotional problems associated with adolescence have been overemphasized and are misleading.

Fact 15
The myth of adolescence as a time of inherent storm and stress is harmful to adolescents in two ways. First, it fosters the expectation that young people entering adolescence are irresponsible, unresponsive, inactivated crazy and unpredictable. Since adolescents are especially vulnerable to adult expectations, they tend to live up (or down) to what adults expect of them. Second, teenagers who are having excessive difficulty during this period of dramatic change may be written off as "going through a stage" and may not get the professional attention they need.

Fact 16
Approximately 80% of all adolescents make it through these years of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional change without pathological storm and stress. Among these adolescents four broad kinds of normal development emerge:

• about one-quarter experience serene development; they grow and change gradually and with remarkable ease:
• about one-third develop in a manner characterized by surging stops and starts; they are impressively "adult" one day and childish the next;
• about one-fifth experience turbulent development; their behavior is stormy, but is not abnormal or pathological; and
• about one-fifth do not fit into any subgroup, but their tendency is towards continuous growth.

Question for Thought and Discussion
What are the characteristics of some young people you know whose development you would describe as serene, surging, or turbulent?

Fact 17
Approximately same proportion of adolescents as adults---one in five show signs of serious disturbance.

Fact 18
Some seriously disturbed adolescents have severe problems as children. Children who are excessively aggressive and of an unusually great amount of "acting out" tend not to outgrow these tendencies; they exhibit similar behavior as adolescents in the absence of professional treatment. There are some serious emblems that appear for the first time in adolescence, however, such as eating disorders (anorexia nervosa and bulimia), sexual promiscuity, substance abuse, and severe depression leading either to serious contemplation of or attempts at suicide. These problems require professional evaluation and attention.

Fact 19
It is essential for adults who work and live with teenagers to distinguish between behavior that is disturbing or annoying to adults (loud music, messy rooms and behavior that is disturbed and harmful to the child (substance abuse, suicide attempts, depression, harmful risk-taking).

Fact 20
One sign of serious disturbance in young people is the inability to relate to peers and fit into a peer group. The peer group and the peer pressure are often viewed as the pervasive, all-powerful, negative force to which adolescents are totally subject. While the peer group may be a source of negative influence in some situations for some adolescents, involvement with friends is necessary if youth are to become socially competent adults.

Fact 21
It is through the peer group that youth begin to learn how to develop and maintain close, mutually supportive relationships with people their own age. This is a social skill not characteristic of Younger children, whose most significant relationships are dependent relationships with parents, but it is an essential skill for a normal, fully functioning adult.

Fact 22
Friendships are laboratories for learning appropriate "adolescent" and "adult" behavior. Young adolescents learn social skills, such as how far to take a practical joke and how to ask a boyfriend or girlfriend to go to a movie, by trying out a variety of behaviors on their friends. The feedback teens give to each other about behavior may or may not be either sensitive or subtle.

Question for Thought and Discussion
How do young adolescents give each other feedback on their behavior? What do they say and do?

Fact 23
Peer groups exist within community and cultural contexts. Close examination of adolescent peer groups often reveals that the peer group represents not a counterculture, but a less polished, more blatant version of the adult culture that surrounds it.

Questions for Thought and Discussion
What are some ways that adolescent peer groups reflect rather than reject larger adult cultures?

Fact 24
Young adolescents’ preoccupation with conformity to others in their peer groups is often troubling to adults, but it is normal for 10 to 15-years-olds. Because an individual adolescent believes that everyone constantly scrutinizes his/her appearance and every act, it is excruciatingly painful to be "different." As they adjust to their own dramatic physical and social changes, and see their friends developing either faster or slower than they, young adolescents’ insecurities and uncertainties drive them to look and act like their friends.

Fact 25
There are times when adolescents need some adult-imposed protection from the peer group. Because of their need to be like peers, their collective inexperience, and their belief that "it can't happen to me," situations arise in which young adolescents need to be protected from themselves and one another. In our society, many adolescents are abandoned to the peer group in the adults' belief that they cannot offset peer pressure. Adults who work with adolescents can have an influence on peer groups through the expectations they set, the relationships they build, and the opportunities they provide for adolescent peer groups to function in a constructive, healthy manner.

Questions for Thought and Discussion
Think of situations in which peer influence is positive or negative. What common factors or circumstances are common to situations where peer influence is positive and pro-social? What factors are common to situations where negative peer influence prevails? How can youth workers encourage positive peer influence?

Fact 26
In addition to other close relationships with peers, close relationships with families and other adults are necessary for healthy adolescent development. One researcher asked teenage girls, "Who is the most important person in your life?" and the greatest majority answered, "My mother." Some of the girls interviewed by the researcher were incarcerated in juvenile corrections institutions. Quite a few of the incarcerated girls named someone else, but added, "I wish it were my mother" Other studies have shown that while peer influence and emotional closeness to peers increase during young adolescence, peer relationships supplement but do not replace ties with parents.

Questions for Thought and Discussion
How do young adolescents let us know that adults are important to them? What do they say and do?

Fact 27
Although adolescents report that they look to the peer group for companionship and for guidance in some aspects of behavior, such as dress, music, hair style, and entertainment, they look to their families for affection, identification, social and moral values, and help in solving big problems or making important decisions.

Fact 28
Disagreements between young adolescents and their families are usually related to the family having to reassess its expectations of a child who is growing up. Periods of disequilibrium are typical in families as young teens and parents work out mutually acceptable ways to accommodate the teens’ new concerns (e.g., the desire for more privacy and autonomy) and parents' continuing sense of responsibility. Families that can make adjustments in mutual expectations, rules, and the way that members relate to each other emerge from periods of disequilibrium with family ties intact and sometimes strengthened. In ethnic minority families where identification with the traditional ethnic culture and family influence are strong, these periods of disequilibrium take on a unique character. As these young people seek personal autonomy and deal with their feelings of being caught between their traditional ethnic culture and the larger culture that surrounds them, conflict with parents, especially disagreements related to involvement in peer groups, may be intensified.

Fact 29
Most adolescents report good relationships with their parents. They feel their parents are understanding, reasonable, fair, and reliable.

Questions for Thought and Discussion
How can youth workers be most helpful to both young adolescents and parents during periods of family disequilibrium? How can youth workers be most helpful to both young teens and parents in dysfunctional families?

Fact 30
In expanding their social world, young adolescents frequently seek the company of adults other than their parents. These other adults often youth workers, teachers, relatives, neighbors or clergy members serve as crucial role models and advisors. These new relationships with other adults are an important part of adolescent social development. As young people begin to explore what it means to be an adult man or woman, they need positive role models, especially of their same gender, race, and ethnicity, who are “living proof”’ of what they can become. Other adults also can provide young adolescents with a secure respite from the intensity of peer and family relationships.

Question for Thought and Discussion
Why is it important for  young adolescents, especially girls and young people of color, to have close relationships with adult role models of their same gender and race?

Fact 31
Problems in relationships between young adolescents and adults, whether the adults are parents or youth workers, often center on young adolescents’ increasing desire for personal autonomy. If adolescents are to move from the dependency of childhood to the interdependency of adulthood; they must have increasing independence and responsibility. Young adolescents' requests (or demands) for more autonomy in some areas, such as dress, curfew, how they spend free time, specific activities they will engage in, and selection of friends, are sometimes misinterpreted by adults as cries for complete independence. While they do need gradually increasing amounts of autonomy as they mature, young adolescents continue to need limits for behavior that are set by adults. These limits should expand as youth mature, enabling young teens to have a voice in determining specific rules and expectations.

Questions for Thought and Discussion
What usually happens when 10 to 15-year-olds are given more autonomy than they can handle? What happens when they are allowed no voice in setting limits and making decisions that shape their lives?

Fact 32
Young adolescents’ worlds expand to reflect their emerging capabilities, desires, and interests and to include their peers, adults other than their parents, and their communities. They often become eager to make commitments to people, ideals, and projects. Because they are changing so rapidly, many of their commitments will be short-term but nevertheless intense.

Fact 33
It is during young adolescence that many people begin to develop the ability to think abstractly and reflectively. These new thinking abilities are called "formal operations."

Fact 34
This new cognitive capacity includes the ability to think about "what might be true if... " and the increasing ability to understand metaphors, abstract mathematical concepts, and ideas like justice and love.

Fact 35
The following passage describes the advent of formal operations:
The conceptions of possibilities outside the immediate environment is the central "new" feature of adolescent thinking It is the feature that best distinguishes the kind of thinking found in adolescents from that encountered in young children. Consider the following anecdote:

Only brave pilots are allowed to fly over high mountains. This summer a fighter pilot flew over the Alps, collided with an aerial cable railway, and cut a main cable causing some cars to fall to the glacier below. Several people were killed and many others had to spend the night over the glacier.

When presented with this anecdote, and asked whether or not the pilot was a careful person, children respond on the basis of the information given to them:

"Yes, he was brave."
"Yes, the cable shouldn't be there."
"No, he was a show-off."
"No, because he hit the cable."
"No, because if he was careful he would not have cut the cable."

Adolescents, on the other hand, go beyond the information actually given to consider possibilities: "Yes (no, he might have been), but the weather (or visibility, maintenance of the plane, other aircraft, health problems) may have played a role."

Adolescents go beyond the information given in the sketch to think about what might be true. They reason by taking what is possible as well as what is actually given as a point of departure for their thought processes.... Adolescents are able to reason about physical and social events in terms of the unobserved and the unobservable. They can for the first time reason about justice, for example, and get quite worked up emotionally about other ideals too.

Fact 36
Since changes in thinking ability occur gradually, it is normal for a young adolescent to be able to think abstractly and reflectively in one area and to be tied to concrete thought in another. For example, an adolescent may be capable of mature thought about justice, religion or higher mathematics, but unable to comprehend the risks involved in sexual intercourse or drug and alcohol experimentation. Although frustrating for adults, this is normal behavior for young adolescents. Important skills or information need to be conveyed in a variety of ways.

Fact 37
Another behavior that frustrates adults, the questioning of formerly accepted rules and beliefs, is linked to these more adult like thought processes. This questioning is a sign that young adolescents are using their new cognitive abilities. They are, for the first time, able to comprehend that not everybody thinks the same way they and their parents do about important moral and social issues. They are capable of understanding ideals, such as justice, and of using logical thinking skills to analyze their own and others' behavior in relation to those ideals. They can see and question inconsistencies between the ideal and the behavior they observe. They are capable of understanding the reasons for rules and raising objections to rules that do not appear to be logical. "Because I said so" is no longer an acceptable reason.

However, they often do not understand exceptions to rules. "That's not fair" is a common complaint in response to an adult's efforts to take into account individual differences and extenuating circumstances. As they begin to think about how situations could be different and ask themselves "what if. .. " questions, they can formulate alternative rules, as well as situations in which the rules may not be applicable.

Fact 38
Young adolescents are often very authoritarian. As they are able to consider ideals like justice and broader social issues, they begin to understand that there is such a thing as a social contract, and that rules and laws are necessary for the greater social good. However, they are not yet able to see the "gray areas" between right and wrong. Their notion of justice is not yet tempered with mercy. It takes time for them to understand the nuances and interrelatedness of different ideals.

Questions for Thought and Discussion
Think about discussions you have had with young adolescents and younger children regarding rules and limits, social issues or values. How does young adolescents’ gradual mastery of new thinking skills make it easier to talk to them about such topics? How do these skills make it harder to talk with teens than with young children?

Fact 39
With the advent of formal operations, young adolescents are able for the first time to project themselves into the future. Young children see the future in terms of days; young adolescents are starting to see the future in terms of years. They can begin to relate their present interests, aspirations, and circumstances to vocational, social and cultural roles they will fulfill in the future.

Fact 40
Two special forms of egocentrism are related to these changes in thinking that emerge during young adolescence:

Young people often appear quite absorbed by their experiences, their appearance, and their behavior. They constantly feel that they are the center of attention, surrounded by an ever-present "imaginary audience" that notices and passes judgment on how they look and everything they do. Therefore, every hair has to be in place, every word has to come out right, and most important, they must look and act like their peers. Although this self-absorption is exasperating and amusing to adults who interact with young adolescents, it is a normal and natural reaction to the many changes of adolescence.

The "personal fable" is a story adolescents tell themselves about themselves, a story they believe to be unique and true. The story centers around their supreme importance and the uniqueness of their experience and their feelings. The personal fable finds expression in such statements as "No one knows how I feel," "I can't talk to anybody," "or "You don't understand." It is also an expression of loneliness. Although the personal fable is normal, it may result in dangerous risk-taking behavior by adolescents who believe they are immune to the consequences of their actions and invulnerable to harm. Statements such as "I won't get pregnant," "I won't die in a car accident," and "I won't get arrested for drinking or using drugs, "are examples of what adolescents say to themselves and to others.

Fact 41
Adolescents begin to break out of these forms of egocentrism as they grow and mature. In building close mutual relationships with other adolescents and sharing innermost concerns and dreams, they begin to realize that other people experience life somewhat as they do. As they gain life experiences and observe the harm that befalls others because of dangerous behavior, they begin to realize that they are not immune to the consequences of their actions.

Question for Thought and Discussion
How do young teenagers’ relationships with their peers and their daily experiences in school, youth programs, their communities, and society in general reinforce or challenge their thinking about the "imaginary audience" and the "personal fable"?

Young adolescents are a challenging group with which to work because they are so variable, both as a group and as individuals. Any group of 10- to 15-year-olds is likely to include early and late physical bloomers, concrete and abstract thinkers, and young people with diverse interests, different social skills, and varying levels of emotional maturity. As they grow accustomed to body changes, gradually master new cognitive ability, learn "adult" social skills, and cope with the excitement and confusion that accompanies all of these changes, individual young adolescents may feel, act, and want to be treated like children one minute and grown-ups the next. They are drawn to youth workers who like and respect them for who they are right now and who respond sensitively to both their present joys and confusion and their dreams and worries about the future.

Questions for Thought and Discussion
Think about a group of 10- to 15-year-olds you either have worked with in the past or whom you are currently working. How would you respond to someone who said, "They're all alike"? What would you tell the person to convince him/her that young adolescents are not "all alike"? What common characteristics would you mention?

References for These Facts

Benson, Peter, Arthur L. Johnson, Philip K Wood, Dorothy L. Williams and Janice E. Mills. Young Adolescents and Their Parents. Minneapolis, Search Institute, 1984.

Crockett, Lisa, Mike Losoff, and Anne C. Peterson. "Perceptions of the Peer Group and Friendship in Early Adolescence," Journal of Early Adolescence, 4(1984), pp. 155-181.

Donovan, Elizabeth and Joseph Adelson, The Adolescent Experience. New York: John Wiley & Sons. New York, 1966.

Elkind, David, "Egocentrism in Adolescence," Child Development, 38 (1967), pp. 1025-34.

Farel, Anita M., Early Adolescence: What Parents Need To Know. Center for Early Adolescence, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carob, N.C., 1982, p. 5.

Hill, John P. Understanding Early Adolescence: A Framework. Center for Early Adolescence, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Carrboro, N.C., 1980, p. 19.

Kandel, Denise B., and Gerald S. Lesser. Youth in Two Worlds. Jossey-Bass, London, 1972.

Konopka, Gisela. Young Girls: A Portrait of Adolescence. Prentice-Hall. Englewood Cliffs N.J., 1976.

Lipsitz, Joan. Growing Up Forgotten. Transaction, Inc. New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1980.

Offer, Daniel. The Psychological World of the Teenager. Basic Books. New York, 1969.

Offer, Daniel, Eric Ostrov, and Kenneth I. Howard. The Adolescent: A Psychological Self-Portrait. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

Richardson, Rhonda A., Nancy L. Galambos, John E. Schulenberg, and Anne C. Peterson. "Young Adolescents' Perception of the Family Environment," Journal of Early Adolescence, 4 (1984), pp. 131-153.

Sorensen, Robert C. Adolescent Sexuality in Contemporary America: Personal Values and Sexual Behavior, Ages Thirteen to Nineteen. World New York 1973.

Tanner, J. M., and R. H. Whitehouse. Growth and Development Record. University of London, Institute of Child Health. London, 1975.

Table I
THE EVENTS OF PUBERTY IN GIRLS 

	Usual age	range:
	Earliest Age	Latest Age	Approximate Average Age
Beginning of breast development	8 3/4 yrs.	13 1/4 yrs.	11 yrs.
Appearance of pubic hair	9 yrs.	13 1/2 yrs.	11 yrs.
Beginning of most rapid growth	10 1/2 yrs.	14 1/2 yrs.	12 yrs.
First menstrual period (menarche)	10 3/4 yrs.	15 1/2 yrs.	12 1/2 yrs.

Table II
THE EVENTS OF PUBERTY IN BOYS

	Usual Age	Range:
	Earliest Age	Latest Age	Approximate Average Age
Beginning of enlargement of testes (become greater than 1 inch long)	9 1/2 yrs.	13 1/2 yrs.	12 yrs.
Growth of the penis	10 yrs.	14 yrs.	12 1/4 yrs.
Appearance of pubic hair	9 1/2 yrs.	14 yrs.	12 1/2 yrs.
Beginning of most rapid growth in height	11 1/2 yrs.	16 yrs.	14 yrs.

These tables, based on data from Sanner (1962) and Tanner and Whitehouse (1975), were prepared by Alan Cross, M.C., Department of Pediatrics, and Anita M. Farel. Ph.D. of the Department of Maternal and Child Health, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.