Adolescence: An in-depth summary of the relationship between adolescents and parents and the problems of being a teenager in the contemporary world.Adolescence comes from the Latin adolescere , which literally means to grow .
It is an age of psycho-physical and social change that leads the young person to understand that he is no longer a child but not an adult either, which leads him to constantly search for a new identity.
Adolescence is a period that varies from eleven to eighteen/nineteen years. The first period of adolescence is called puberty and is characterized by physical changes that lead to sexual maturation .
PUBERTY
In males, there is an increase in the volume of the testicles, the appearance of extensive hair all over the body and face, a change in the skin and sweating, which can also lead to changes in mood, height and muscular structure: the voice changes and becomes deeper.
Around the fourteenth year the first ejaculation occurs, a change experienced positively by the boy since it is culturally associated with power and virility: this marks the end of puberty .
In females, puberty leads to an increase in breast volume, the appearance of hair in the armpits, groin and legs. Acne appears especially on the face and the hips widen.
For females, puberty ends around the thirteenth year of life, when menarche appears , or the first menstruation , a change that, if premature, can be experienced negatively and with discomfort.
ADOLESCENCE: CONSEQUENCES
The adolescent period , and therefore also puberty, varies from person to person. Usually for males it is between ten and sixteen years old, while for females it varies from eight to fourteen years old.
Puberty can be early or late : if early it is generally experienced in a negative sense, to the point that the young person may try to hide the signs of sexual maturity because they do not coincide with the image of perfection that he has.
If it is late, however, it is awaited with anxiety as it is considered a sign of maturation .
The adolescent, in addition to changing physically, also shows processes of internal change, which follow different processes.
The first, the most significant, is identified as a process of separation and identification: characterized by separation from parents, and the search for one’s own identity.
From an early age, the boy identifies with the image that his parents have and give of him, while with adolescence he must create his own image. This can lead to anxiety, insecurities and the manifestation of different defense mechanisms and contradictory behaviors.
The adolescent finds himself in a situation of depressive anxiety , which arises from the lack of a reference figure, which was previously identified with the parents. but can also manifest persecutory anxiety , distinct from hostility towards the parents and generated by insecurity. This leads to continuous conflicts, which can however be useful to the individual to grow.
The young person may react to the loss of the reference figure with a narcissistic defense , therefore focusing on himself, in an attempt to increase his self-esteem.
ADOLESCENCE AND ITS PROBLEMS
If he does not accept the changes that are taking place in his body, the adolescent tends to close himself in. Later, he can react by intellectualizing the emotions and rationalizing them , in order to create fantasies and dreams in which he becomes a perfect and ideal person for him.
In that case, the young person divides other individuals into good and bad, and identifies peers as “good” and adults as “bad”. Subsequently, he is led to idealize and create reference models. Finally, what is called projection in jargon occurs , that is, the adolescent relates to others by projecting his own emotions (“She likes me” would in reality be “I like her”).
