What+is+Adolescence?

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What is Adolescence to me as a male adult or to female adults? What do the great minds of the ages say? What is adolescence to a child of 8 years, or to the child that is in it, living through adolescence and coping with all it's highs and lows, struggles and challenges? Dictionary.com gives defintion to adolescence as follows; "1. the transitional peroid between puberty and adulthood in human development, extending mainly over the teen years and terminating legally when the age of majority is reached; youth. 2. the process of state of growing to maturity. 3. a period or stage of development, as of a society, preceding maturity." Me, I describe adolescence as care free time where life had only the pressures of "what the hell we doin' tonight?" and "How do I suck up the courage to talk to her?" mixed with crazy changes happening to my body and mind. Hair started sprouting from my arm pits, and testees, muscles were forming, zits emerged then more zits emerged, sex filled my thoughts even though I had no clue what to do or when I was going to tap "him" on the shoulder and send "him" into the game, I started to seek an abundance of independence and the power tug o war with mom and dad began, my appetite was costing my parents an arm and a leg, and there was new pressures of popularity, girls, hair styles and hair gel, bathing frequency changed, and I felt as if all eyes were on me. Egocentrism, the studious say, goes on the decline at this time, but I remember I was more number one then ever before though. Chores you say? I had plans. Curfews? I got plans. Homework? I gots myself plans. Do a favour for mom and dad? Hello! I got plans. Get a weekend job? Now that's really gonna fuck with my plans. Egocentrism on the decline I don't know, but that's just my view. Miss. Simcoe reminised and shared her perspective as an adolescent girl, "Adolescence was a time of confusion, awkwardness, fear, growth, change, stress and uncertainy. I had no idea who I was or what was happening to me. One minute I was happy and the next minute I was in tears. Going through so many changes all at once while trying to fit in and If those changes happen too fast or not fast enough you feel insecure and self conscious. Being an adolescent girl is especially hard because there is so much pressure to be skinny, pretty, and perfect but you never feel able to live up to the expectations. Going down the wrong path sometimes feels like the easiest route because there seems like less uncertainties and more acceptence at the time. Sigmund Freud explains his views of adolescence in his genital stage, the fifth and final Freudian stage of development, occurs from puberty on. The genital stage is a time of sexual reawakening; the source of sexual pleasure now becomes from someone outside the family (oppose to wanting to replace the same sex parent and enjoy the affections of the opposite-sex parent). When resolved, the indvidual is capable of developing a mature love relationship and functioning independently as an adult. (Santrock, MacKenzie-Rivers, Leung, & Malcomson, 2005). The formal operational stage, the final Piagetian2 stage (Jean Piaget) explains that "individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in abstact and more logical terms. As part of thinkin more abstractly adolescents develop images of ideal circumstances and begin to entertain possibilites for the future. In solving problems, formal operational thinkers are more systematic, developing hypotheses about why something is happening the way it is and then testing these hypotheses." (Santock, MacKenize-Rivers, Leung, & Malcomson, 2005). 14 year old Drake explains his adolescence as a time where he wants to make his own decisions and learn from his own mistakes, thus seeking more independence. With this characteristc of independence emerging also comes the parental/adolescent struggle for who's controlling who. Does his parents still think that Drake is ten or eleven incapable of making sound decisions by himself and treat him with that view stuck in their mind? Or is Drake, now in young adolescence, chomping on too big of decisions for his young mind to comprehend and to process to the maximum ability? Drake, a strapping lad of five feet eleven, one seventy pounds says the bodies of everyone in high school are changing, and he has the good fortune of being one of the bigger kids. In his words "it would suck to be short and skinny". Girls are changing and are now more noticable because of a mixture of testosterone and maturing bodies. Even with all these changes going on around Drake before his very eyes it seems he's oblivous to that fact events are actually happening changing his wold without his consent. At times, changes move in so subtly and prolonged that recognizing these changes is hard to do without someone pointing them out.