Parents can get more information by checking out the 'talk pages'. Click the button below.
 

If you're asking the question -

'Why do adolescents sometimes...?'

Act up, go inward, have extreme behaviour, flout authority, test the boundaries of discipline, support causes so strongly, identify with their peers more than adults, get embarrassed by adults they have previously felt OK about, seem very adult one day and childlike the next, take enormous risks, seem preoccupied with their own needs, worry so much about how they look, spend so much money/time/energy on the latest craze, behave unreliably, value loyalty so highly, get aggressive, seem so frustrated, seem so miserable, get so high as a kite, worry what others think of them?

Then try asking yourself “How would it be for you if………..”

Your hormones were surging, you suddenly changed body shape, you started having strong sexual urges, your friends of the opposite sex start treating you differently, your friends of the same sex start treating you differently, you moved from being treated as a child to being treated as an adult almost overnight, you suddenly realised you had the capacity to reproduce and have children, you moved quickly from one way of thinking to realising there were many different ways of thinking, you kept finding yourself having abstract thoughts, you kept getting mind blown by watching the news and suddenly being able to understand what was happening in your world, you realised all the things you thought were right and wrong might not be, you found yourself uncertain about what was right and wrong, you began to realise that your parents and adults around you said one thing to you but didn’t actually follow it through in their own actions, you realised that sometime soon you would have to leave your family who you’d lived with all your life and make your own way in the world, you wanted to try out being an adult but be allowed to still be a child sometimes too, you worried about how you would fit into the world out there and how you fit in now with your friends, you noticed how you looked and felt it didn’t match up with how you thought you were supposed to look, you feared that others might think you foolish or that you might be left alone, you felt with so much going on in and around you that you no longer knew the answer to the question 'Who am I?'

.....do you need to ask any more?

[go to Parents section]