What are the phases of adolescence?
Adolescence is a phase of transition from childhood to adulthood involving range of physical,mental and psycho-social changes. Due to various hormonal changes,many physical,mental and behavioural changes takes place during this transition.Adolescence is a period between 10-19 years and youth is a period between 15-24 years. During this phase young people often try to develop clear identity and are concerned about social and body image.
3 substages of adolescence are-
Early adolescence (10-14 years)
Mid adolescence (15-17 years)
Late adolescence (> 17 years)
Out of these stages, early adolescence is the most difficult phase to handle for parents.
What are the various mental health challenges faced by adolescents?
20% of the children and adolescents suffer from disabling mental health issues.Main contributing factor for these health issues is emotional vulnerability and risk taking behaviour.
Various issues among adolescents are:
- Depression and mood swings
- Anxiety
- Deliberate self harm and suicidal thoughts
- Accidents and injury
- Drug and Alcohol addiction
- Unsafe sexual experiments
- Aggression
- Bullying
- Violence
- Criminal acts
- Social anxiety
Why adolescence phase is so critical?
This phase is so critical in development of a child as during this phase adolescence tries to establish independent identity in home,society and due to hormonal changes during this phase adolescents become more vulnerable to emotional disturbances. Also,during this phase of adolescence,children have to leave home for studies and hence they come more in contact with new friends and peer pressure. Attraction towards other sex develope naturally during this phase. More exploring natural instinct with high risk taking behaviour makes this phase more labile to many mental,social issues in this phase.
What parents can do to help adolescence?
Prepare yourself and your children for this phase beforehand:
Actually speaking,parents should prepare themselves and their children beforehand to go through adolescent phase smoothly predicting future problems in advance.From the age when child starts understanding himself as an individual being,parents should try to become role model of children and should try to build a friendly rapport with children. The most important sign of good rapport and good parent child relation is that child can express each and every emotion in front of parents fearlessly.
Treat them as adults and become their friends:
Parents should treat adolescents as adults and not as child and must try to give small small responsibilities to adolescents.Simultaneously try to become their friends so that they should feel free to share their thoughts,feelings,ambitions ,future plans with them.
Don't refuse to listen:
The most important and effective way to become your child's friend is give time and patient hearing to their talk. Try not to cross or refuse their suggestion,idea or thought directly instead discuss the thinking,values,motive behind this thought and come to conclusion by discussion.
Know their friends,role models and influencing circle:
In this age,adolescents are more influenced by their peers and social media and their role models. Role models could be bollywood heroes,politicians,sports persons. Peer pressure and influencers drive all their activities.Hence keep a watch on this by doing following things:
- Ask your child to introduce his/her all friends to you.You can join their birthday parties or home parties.
- Monitor the social media content he/she is focusing upon.
- Discuss with them the reality of the movies and TV serials.
What are the red flag signs of abnormal behaviour in adolescents?
Some behavioural red flag signs in adolecent behaviour are:
- Health issues such as frequent headache,aches or pain.
- Social withdrawl, avoidence bahaviour
- Non attendence at school
- Sudden change in behaviour or behavioue like feeling low,feeling unhappy or irritated,frequent anger outbursts at low threshold
- Feeling of selflessness, avoident tendency
- Sleep disturbances
- Eating disorders like over-eating and under-eating
- Self harm attempts
- Feeling of tiredness and getting bored most of the times
What are the signs that adolescent is on verge of self harm?
Thought of self harm can be prominent in young people with depression.Early sign of depression can be loss of enjoyment in life and feeling of worthlessness,sleeping and feeding disturbances. Subsequently adolescent may feel like not living anymore.
How to handle adolescent with low threshold of getting angry?
Anger in adolescent is like a tip of an iceberg. Underlying emotions are depression,anxiety,body image issues,autistic or hyperactive behaviour. Parents can modify behaviour by patient listening,trying to understand their point of views and thoughts and their personality,by giving guarded freedom to explore the world and inculcating value systems in them since childhood. Also most importantly family envionment should be calm and non-violent so that child can look upto parents as role model. Try to engage adolescents in creative activities and sports and yoga.
How to handle the complaint of adolescent''NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME''?
Adolescence is a phase where child is moving towards attaining independence at several levels. Parents role is to give guarded freedom to child that allows them to explore their potentials in healthy and guarded environment. The most important and effective way is to start them treating as an adult and acknowledging their views and giving responsibility to them and some freedom to make decisions. Start giving limited pocket money per month so that they start developing value of money and will feel like getting some financial education.
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