Adolescent Development
Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service
Core In-Service
December 3, 2009
Ron Cox, Ph.D., Family Science Specialist
Debbie Richardson, Ph.D., Parenting Assistant Extension Specialist
Human Development & Family Science
Oklahoma State University
1
Welcome
 Introductions
 Overview of In-service
2
In-Service Objectives
Extension Educators will be able to:
 Identify and understand theories and principles of
development, transitions, and growth for the pre-teen
and teenage years (ages 10-18) including physical,
cognitive, emotional, and social development.
 Identify and address risk and resilience factors for pre-
teens and teens.
 Identify and address common parenting and youth
development issues
 Identify and apply appropriate, available resources.
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Some Definitions
 Adolescence – time between childhood & adulthood
 Early adolescence – about 10-14 years of age
 Middle adolescence – about 15-17
 Late adolescence – about age 18 to early 20’s
Next to early childhood, the early adolescent period is
characterized by the most developmental change
at many different levels
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Areas of Development
 Cognitive & brain
 Physical & sexual
 Social & emotional
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Physical and Sexual
Development
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Physical Development
 Most rapid physical
development since infancy
 Puberty
 Growth spurt and changes
in body composition
 Changes in circulatory and
respiratory systems Increase in strength and
stamina
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Growth & Body Composition
 Height
 in 1 year, boys can gain ave. 4.1”, girls 3.5”
 average teen grows 12” taller
 Weight
 increased muscle in boys, body fat in girls
 Shifts in body proportions
 Hardening of bones
 Sequence of growth starts in extremities (hands, feet)
and moves inward with torso growing last in size
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Immense changes can result in…
 Clumsiness & awkwardness
 Aches & pains
 Sensitivity to body image
 Tiredness – need sleep
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Puberty
 Development into sexual maturity
 Hormones controlling physical development are
activated
 Develop primary & secondary sex characteristics
 Become fertile
 Experience increased sexual libido
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Sex Characteristics
Primary - Organs that allow reproduction
Secondary - External characteristics that signal
maturation; related to but not directly involved in
reproduction
 Girls – menstruation, breast development, body hair
 Boys – development of testes, changes in vocal cord
size and deepening of voice, body hair
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Puberty – Internal Process
 Endocrine glands produce & regulate levels of
hormones in blood
 Hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and gonads (ovaries,
testicles) operate in a “feedback loop”, producing and
maintaining levels of sex hormones (androgens and
estrogens) mainly responsible for primary & secondary
changes
 Both androgens and estrogens are produced by each
gender –boys more androgens, girls more estrogens
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Puberty – Internal Process
 Pituitary gland secretes hormones that influence
thyroid and adrenal cortex to release hormones that
stimulate overall body growth
 Hormones perform both organization and activation
roles
 organize way brain is shaped as it is growing
 activate changes in behavior at different times
during life
 activate changes in secondary sex characteristics
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Timing of Puberty
 Girls tend to experience pubertal changes earlier than boys
by 24 months on average
 Internal changes may begin:
 about age 7-8 in girls and up to about 13
 about age 9.5-11 in boys up to about 13.5
 Hormone production levels off by about age 15 for girls and
16-17 for boys
Turn to Nebraska fact sheet
Understanding the Physical Changes of Puberty
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Timing of Physical Maturation
 Each individual follows a unique path to adult physical
maturity - Points in physical development may be very
different for individual youth between 10 and 15
 Usually by 16-17, any differences will level off
 Being early or late developer can be stressful when
compared to timing of their friends
 Early Developers
 Tends to be advantageous for boys – sports, social
standing
 More problematic for girls – body image, attention from
others, lower self-esteem, adjustment to school
transitions
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Influences on Puberty
Timing & Tempo
 Primary influence is one’s genes
 Most important external factors: Nutrition & Health
 Puberty occurs earlier for children who have been
well-nourished and without serious illnesses
 Also tends to occur earlier for teens growing up in
conflict-ridden families and for females in fatherabsent homes
 Excessive exercise is associated with delays
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Sexuality Challenges
 Sexual maturity is happening earlier (e.g., age of
menarche)
 Marriage is happening later
 Children are sexually mature in a physical sense
long before they are capable of entering into mature,
adult relationships
 Media and other social influences
 Gender identity
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Teens & Sleep
 Rapid growth and change requires enough rest
 Hormones may affect sleep needs
 Tend to stay up later and wake up later
 When left to their own schedule, tend to stay awake
until 1:00 a.m. and sleep until about 10:00 a.m.
 Need about 9 ½ hours sleep each day/night
 Concerns that teens do not get enough sleep
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Eating
 Basal metabolic rate decreases about 15% during
puberty
 Obese adolescents will likely continue to be obese
as adults (about 80%)
 Disordered eating patterns are common among
adolescents
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Social and Emotional
Development
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Changes that Influence
Social & Emotional Development
 Biological/hormonal
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transformations
Psychological shifts that
accompany emergence of
sexuality
Increased capacity for
abstract thinking
Educational/school
transitions
Shifting relationships with
family and peers
 Heightened competition,
social comparison, and
self-assessment
 Shifting social roles and
expectations
 More independence and
unsupervised time
 Coping with stresses of
change
5 Primary Issues of Adolescence
 Establishing a personal identity
 Establishing autonomy
 Establishing intimacy
 Becoming comfortable with own sexuality
 Achievement
(Steinberg, 2007)
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Erikson’s Stages of
Psychosocial Development
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7 to 11 years
Industry vs. Inferiority
Learn to be competent and
productive or feel inferior and
unable to do anything well.
Adolescence
Identity vs. Role Confusion
Try to figure out “Who am I?”
Establish sexual, ethnic, and
career identities, or are
confused about what future
roles to play.
Adulthood
Intimacy vs. Isolation
Develops secure intimate
relationships and love, or
remain in shallow relationships
and experience isolation or
loneliness
4 Basic Questions of Adolescence
 Who am I?
sexuality, social roles
 Am I normal?
do I fit in
 Am I competent?
good at something that is valued
 Am I lovable and loving?
by someone besides parents
To encourage positive development, it is important to:
 Give adolescents opportunities to work on their own
answers to these questions.
 Provide safe environments where adolescents feel free to
explore such difficult issues.
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Establishing Identity
Developmental Tasks
 New and more mature relations with others in one’s
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age group (male & female)
Gender social role
Accepting physical body
Emotional independence from parents & other adults
Preparing for future - marriage & family life, education,
economic career
Acquiring set of values and ethical system to guide
behavior; developing an ideology
Desiring and achieving socially responsible behavior
Identity
 Establishing a sense of identity doesn’t occur
much before age 18
 Late teens/early 20’s are very important period in
identity development – individuals move from one
identity status to another
 Gender identity is important component
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Autonomy
 Becoming an independent and self-governing
person within relationships
 Not becoming completely independent from
others or “rebellion”
 Necessary to become self-sufficient as adult in
society
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3 Types of Autonomy
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Emotional
Changes that occur in close
relationships, especially parents
Behavioral
Ability to make independent
decisions and carry through
Value
Developing set of principles about
right & wrong that guide one’s
thinking and behavior
Intimacy
 Close relationships with others that are open, honest, caring,
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trusting; Intimacy ≠ Sex
Usually first learned in context of same-sex friendships then
utilized in romantic relationships
Pre-adolescent friendships are more activity based
Friendships provide setting to practice social skills with those
who are equals; learn how to begin, maintain, and terminate
relationships
As emphasis on peer groups grows, so does emphasis on
close relationships, same sex and opposite sex
Early secure bonds (attachment) with caregivers are
psychosocially healthier than those with insecure
attachments
Relationships with Family
 Seek more independence, autonomy, privacy
 Realize parents are not all-knowing and all powerful
 May question family rules and roles leading to conflicts over
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issues such as dress, appearance, chores, dating
Parents and teens also have fewer interactions and do
fewer things together – “distancing”
They often want to fill with close relationships with other,
non-familial adults – to share ideas and gain wisdom
Without other close adults, may turn disproportionately to
their peers for guidance
Even though they may not admit it, parents are still most
important
Relationships with Peers
In early adolescence…
 Give priority to social activities with peers, peer
acceptance, and appearance
 Conformity to peers peaks
 Pressure from peers to engage in misconduct increases
 Tend to agree with parents’ views on important issues
(morality, education, politics, religion) while peer have more
influence on appearance, music, activities
 Tend to seek out friends similar to them
 Peer group acts more to reinforce existing strengths and
weaknesses rather than change their characteristics
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Peer Groups
 More peer contact with opposite sex friends
 Increase in functioning without adult supervision
 Large peer groups, or crowds, form defined by
reputation & stereotypes, sense of identity
 Cliques – small groups of 2-12 peers, usually same sex,
age, race, social class; common activities or friendships
 By 9th grade – very rigid crowd structure, peer pressure
is highest
 Later adolescence - Crowd structure becomes less rigid
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Emotions
 Perceive feelings more intensely and give into impulses
 Often feel sad, overwhelmed, depressed, and lonely
 Easily feel embarrassed
 Overly concerned with how they look, especially height,
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weight, skin, and body shape
Self-critical
Analyze and worry about details of conversations, behaviors
Improved ability to use speech to express emotions
Tendency to return to childish behavior, particularly when
stressed
Fear of losing parents
Emotions
About age
11-12
13-14
often irritable, excite easily, more likely to
explode than control their emotions
15
try harder to cover up their feelings, more
apt to be moody and withdrawn
16-17
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extreme emotionality begins
more capable of taking a calmer approach
to life, experience fewer worries, less
moodiness
Moodiness
 Moods tend to fluctuate more than adults - bounce from
silly, happy, exuberant to withdrawn, grouchy, sad
 Direct connection between hormones and moods is not
very strong
 May be the fluctuation rather than dramatic increase in
hormones that affects moodiness
 Mood swings seem to parallel changes in activities
 While moods of girls are related to hormone levels, life
stressors seem to be more important predictors
 Individuals have different patterns of mood changes –
frequency of fluctuations, happiness, negativity
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Self-Concept & Self-Esteem
 By age 10, children are typically far less optimistic and self-
concept regarding their abilities and expectations for
success tend to decline
 Skills are not developing as rapidly as earlier in childhood
 Receive more “failure feedback”
 More able to reflect on their performances, compare to other
peers, and learn that current failures may be clues to future
performances
 Some children experiencing more frustration and becoming
more pessimistic about their abilities may be hesitant to try
new things with which they are unlikely to succeed at first
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Self-Concept & Self-Esteem
 Confidence in physical appearance and social acceptance
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(from peers) is often a more important predictor of their selfesteem than confidence in their cognitive/ academic
competence
Adolescents’ feelings about self fluctuate day-to-day,
especially in early adolescence
Baseline self-esteem generally remains fairly stable
throughout adolescence
Context-dependent
Overall, self-esteem is enhanced by receiving approval of
others and by succeeding in school
Adolescents with at least one close friendship report higher
levels of self-esteem than those who do not
Achievement
 Home environment is strongest predictor of
educational and occupational achievement
 Parents who encourage school success, set high
standards, support consistent values, involvement in
education
 Quality of home environment, amount of exposure to
culturally enriching experiences, social support and
encouragement
 Friends who value school success vs. negative
orientation toward school
 School environments also influence
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Risk and Resilience
Factors
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Individual Factors
 Temperament
 Personality
 Past behaviors
 Experiences
 Mental health
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Major Aspects
Parenting Behavior
Parental Responsiveness
 Love
 Warmth
 Nurturance
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Parental Demandingness
• Discipline
• Control
Parenting Styles
 Authoritarian – autocratic, highly demanding and
directive but not responsive.
 Authoritative – both demanding and responsive,
firm and supportive rather than punitive.
 Permissive – indulgent, nondirective, more
responsive than demanding.
 Unengaged – uninvolved, low responsiveness and
low demanding.
Baumrind, 1991
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Influences of Parenting
 Combination of warmth and moderate levels of control
healthy identity development
 Opportunities for personal autonomy and encouraging role in
family decision making
positive outcomes such as self
confidence, school satisfaction and adjustment, moral reasoning,
responsibility, social & academic skills
 Coercive, authoritarian parenting
more dependent,
passive, weaker social skills, highly rebellious responses, lower
self-esteem, less curious, more peer oriented
 Permissive and indifferent parenting
more influenced
by peers, less mature and responsible, impulsive, delinquent
behavior
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Child ↔ Parent
influence each other’s behavior
Bi-directional
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Family Environment
 Accelerating effort by youths to control their own
lives is accompanied by pressure on family to
renegotiate power balance between parent and
child
 Fit between family environment and youth’s
developmental needs is critical to successful
adaptation by both parents and adolescents
 Parents ability to adjust to adolescent’s changing
needs with relatively little conflict
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Peer Relationships
 Peers provide feedback about development that cannot be
gained from adults – facilitate development of autonomy,
intimacy, achievement, and sexuality
 Become friends both because of prior similarities and they
become like each other the more they interact (selection &
socialization)
 Peers can have negative or positive influence
 Peer relationships as protective factors – see Resource
Update Abstract
 Poor peer relations predicts low academic achievement,
delinquent behavior, emotional and health problems
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School
 School, academic and classroom environments –
organization and structure, relationships and
interactions with teachers, classroom practices
 Transition to junior high and high school triggers
negative changes for some youths
 Declining grades strongly predict declines in self-
perceptions and academic motivation
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Community and Neighborhood
 Shape norms to which adolescents are exposed
 Influence quality of relationships with others
including their parents
 Facilitate or limit access to economic and
institutional resources
 Collective efficacy – extent to which neighbors
trust each other, share common values, monitor
activities
 Stressors – poverty, violence
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“Research studies…suggest that family, school, and
other organized environments that are responsive
and developmentally sensitive to the changes in
young adolescents’ needs and desires can facilitate
positive development during the turbulent earlyadolescent years.”
(Eccles, 1999)
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Remember…
 The majority of teens, about 80%, never present
serious problems or get into real trouble
 Most changes and behaviors of adolescents are
“normal”
 Testing rules, challenging authority, thinking for
themselves are their primary tasks
 Parents are still most important
 Listen and take his/her feelings seriously
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Experimenting with Risk Behaviors
 Normal part of adolescence
 However, can lead to the formation of
dangerous habits
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Parental Monitoring
 Where are you going?
 With whom are you going?
 What are you doing?
 When will you be home?
Start early
Parents model these questions when they go out – to show
concern, fairness rather than control
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Adolescents develop best…
When they have a supportive family and community life
characterized by:
 Warmth and mutual respect
 Serious and lasting interest of parents and other adults
 Parental and adult attention to their cognitive, physical,
emotional and social changes
 Close supervision and clear standards regarding discipline
 Communication of high expectations for achievement and
ethical behavior
 Democratic and helpful ways of dealing with conflict
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 Family Meal Time
 Media
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Implications
and
Applications
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Tips for Parents
 Realize child’s growing signs of independence and annoying,
frustrating behaviors are normal and healthy
 Balance between support and love and boundaries and limits
 Have firm expectations
 Continue to show love and respect
 Monitoring
 When problems arise, work together for solutions
 Schedule time for family fun
 Keeping cool and sense of humor
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Referrals
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Resources
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Questions
Discussion
60
Wrap-Up
 In-service evaluation
 Follow-up
61
References
Eccles, J. S. (1999). The development of children ages 6 to 14. The
Future of Children, 9(2), 30-44.
Steinberg, L. (2007). Adolescence (8th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
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