Something to reflect on : the trials, tribulations,struggles and excitement of adolescence

First posted on March 24th, 2011 on the goodenoughcaring home page at http://www.goodenoughcaring.com/  where many other many articles relating to children, childhood, child development, parenting, families, foster care and residential child care can be found.


As adults with a responsibility to look after young people who are experiencing the onset of puberty while butting through the storms and languishing in the occasional calms of adolescence, we sometimes adopt a temporary amnesia concerning the trials, tribulations, and the excitement we experienced at that time in our lives. We forget those occasions when we thought or said "When I become a parent I am going to make a better job of the world than my Mum or Dad." Instead an understanding dawns on us of the frustrations our parenting figures felt when we as youngsters thought it unreasonable that we were not, for instance, allowed to stay out late every night. As we rediscover the parenting wheel for ourselves we can appreciate that adolescence is an essential part of the development of both generations. The psychoanalyst, Margot Waddell begins to explore the adolescent phenomenon in this excerpt from her book, Inside Lives .



"......the nature of adolescence and its course are organised around responses to the upheaval of puberty. Adolescence can be described, in narrow terms, as a complex adjustment on the child's part to these major physical and emotional changes. This adjustment entails finding a new, and often hard-won, sense of onself-in-the-world, in the wake of the disturbing latency attitudes and ways of thinking. The means by which this altered relationship to the self may be achieved vary across a very wide range of behaviour, of different modes of defence and adaptation, from being the "conforming", "pseudo adult", "good" boy or girl to being the "tear-away", the "drug addict", the "suicide risk", "bad" boy or girl. It may take several years, or decades,for the turmoil to settle. For adolescents the psychic agenda is a demanding one : the negotiation between adult and infantile structures; the transition from life in the family to life in the world; the finding and establishing of an identity, especially in sexual terms; in short the capacity to manage separation, loss, choice, independence, and perhaps disillusionment with life on the outside."



Reference



Waddell, Margot (1998) Inside Lives  London  :  Karnac Books 2005,  p140