Adolescence

“ Is adolescence a period of mental and emotional distress for the growing girl as inevitably as teething is a period of misery for the small baby? Can we think of adolescence as a time in the life history of every girl child which carries with it symptoms of conflict and stress as surely as it implies a change in the girl’s body? ”

“ Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of manhood. ”

“ It indicates that the stages of mental growth anticipating adolescence form a separate and formative type of psychological study; that a knowledge of the changes which then take place is as vital a matter of human concern as can well be imagined; and that the shaping of interest, which then first buds, remains the supreme question of educational practice. Thus both for education and for psychology, adolescence has a directive importance. ”

“ Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born. ”

“ The years of adolescence in the male are characterised by an impulse to travel, to adventures, but in addition to all kinds of ideal efforts and to religious activity. The loftiest ethical ideas alternate with a self-conscious bumptiousness. ”

“ Lest we should seem to be placing too much emphasis upon adolescence, with the idea that the mere passing of that period will lead to change in behavior, we cite Cases 3, 5, and 6, where the addition of years has brought no betterment. ”

“ His fancies never quite became convictions, but adolescence is the golden age of this kind of dreamery and reverie which supplements reality and totalizes our faculties, and often gives a special charm to dramatic activities and in morbid cases to simulation and dissimulation. ”

“ Then there is adolescence with all its moodiness, questions, fears, and experimenting related to adult modes of being. The moods are a mystery and the questions often unanswerable or the answers contradictory. ”

“ The first cycle of infancy is succeeded by the cycle of adolescence, which opens with by far the greatest stage of romance which we ever experience. It is in this stage that the lines of character are graven. How the child emerges from the romantic stage of adolescence is how the subsequent life will be moulded by ideals and coloured by imagination. It rapidly follows on the generalization of capacity produced by the acquirements of spoken language and of reading. ”

“ Characterization of the age from eight to twelve—The era of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development—Life close to nature—The age also for drill, habituation, memory, work and regermination—Adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, but very distinct from it. ”

“ These theorizations even in their extreme forms have been not only highly suggestive but have brought great and new enthusiasms and ideals into the educational world that admirably fit adolescence. The motive of bringing out latent, decaying, or even new powers, skills, knacks, and feats, is full of inspiration. ”

“ Whereas adolescence is anterior to this complete solidification; and from this it follows that we feel, in the company of young girls, the refreshing sense that is afforded us by the spectacle of forms undergoing an incessant process of change, a play of unstable forces which makes us think of that perpetual re-creation of the primordial elements of nature which we contemplate when we stand by the sea. ”

“ If it faithfully depict the psychology of child life, of adolescence, of dawning maturity, devoid though it be of plot and, as a whole, of dramatic interest, it may yet, as a typical human portrait, justify itself; may aid the young to a better understanding of their own natures, and help those no longer young to a keener remembrance, a deeper sympathy, and a broader tolerance concerning the struggles, problems, and complexities that beset the young lives around them. ”

“ The crisis of adolescence may be said to culminate about the years from fifteen to seventeen with girls, and sixteen to eighteen with boys,or the period of Middle Adolescence. During these years the feelings and the imagination are a great storm center, largely because of the rapid development of the altruistic feelings, and the enlarged conception of life with the new ideals it has given.
Divine Wisdom in the order of the soul's unfolding can be seen nowhere more clearly than in connection with the growth of responsibility for another. ”

“ YOUTH, or Adolescence, in general, is that happy period of human life, which commences from childhood; continues as long as the fibres increase in dimensions or firmness; and terminates at full growth: among the Romans, it was computed from the age of 12 to 25, in males, and to 21, in females. In modern times, the term adolescence, includes the age of from 15 to 25 years, and sometimes to 30. ”

“ Gifted people seem to conserve their youth and to be all the more children, and perhaps especially all the more intensely adolescents, because of their gifts, and it is certainly one of the marks of genius that the plasticity and spontaneity of adolescence persists into maturity. ”

“ Here we must recall the very pregnant sense in which, as I have tried in my Adolescence to set forth at greater length, education in its various implications began in the initiations of youth by their elders into the pubertal stage of life and slowly extended upward toward the university, and downward toward the kindergarten, as civilization advanced. ”

“ Then when the first years of adolescence with their hot impulses are past, and a temporary calm sets in, they experience a new desire, which is that they may enter into the full possession of their own being before beginning to raise a new generation. ”

“ But the child grows up, and reaches adolescence. He stands on the threshold of life, and the school-bench is left behind him. School has taught him but little—a few facts and some elementary information. ”

“ HAVING now discussed the more important matters relative to child­hood, we may advance another stage with our subject, and take into consideration a few of the many important matters which pertain to the period of adolescence, which is the transition-state from childhood to womanhood. ”

“ I have watched individuals sitting on the seashore playing with the sand for an hour at a time; so that when I shall attempt to define the plays of adolescents, let me not be understood as meaning that these are the only plays of adolescents, for adolescents do all that the preceding groups have done. That which I shall attempt to describe will be the plays that the adolescents have that are not found to any particular extent before adolescence, and which may thus be called characteristics of adolescence. ”

“ During one class in which we reviewed the psychological hazards of adolescence a very intelligent student raised his hand and was recognized by the professor. “How does anybody ever really grow up?” this student asked. ”

“ From many points of view adolescence is perhaps the most important epoch in the life of every individual. It is a time of great and significant organic growth, with the development of new organs and functions, and a corresponding transformation of both the emotional and intellectual output. So far as the brain, the most important organ of all, is concerned, one may safely say that before puberty its main function has been acquisition. ”

“ The beginning of the reflective period witnesses the subsidence of the fierce storms [73] of earlier adolescence and is followed by comparative physical and emotional calm, although attended by intellectual agitations of lesser import. The boy now enters an era of mental development characterized by a thoughtful, reflective attitude toward the great problems of life. A serious viewpoint is developed which changes the previous aspect of the world. He devotes much thought to his life-work ”

“ So it is with the human being: the character and habit are directed easily in infancy, with difficulty during childhood, but they are well-nigh impossible of direction by the time adolescence is established. ”

“ For teenagers who are struggling to cope with the many physical and emotional changes of adolescence, as well as the external pressures that weigh so heavily on young people today, such encouragement and guidance are essential. ”

“ and the truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn. ”

“ It is the period of altruism, love, and vocation. The period of early adolescence is egoistic; this period is ego-social, and strongly altruistic. This change in the unfolding nature of youth opens the interest to stories of self-sacrifice, heroic service and love even for enemies. These stories could not be appreciated in so keen a way before. This altruistic interest normally awakens several years earlier in girls than in boys. ”

“ Great importance attaches, therefore, from the point of view of mental efficiency and stability in adult life, to the influences which control the development of the conative trends during childhood and adolescence. ”

“ A feeling will become habitual if continually indulged and expressed, and it is during adolescence that habits are permanently fixed.
27. Needs of the Intermediate Age.—The needs of this period are of two sorts—important and imperative. It is exceedingly important that the pupil be treated with consideration, respect, and appreciation, that he be given good literature, that he be guarded and guided in his social life. It is imperative, however, that he be established in the right relation to God and to his neighbor at this time of new consciousness of these relationships. ”

“ The crowning application of these several precepts and practices is to those special phases of growth which find their joint issue in adolescence. Here more than anywhere else must the natural sequence of evolution determine the variety of occupation that shall prepare for the adult life ”

“ We must seek the key to these perversions by addressing ourselves to the larger underlying and preliminary problems of determining the natural forms of psychic and somatic transitions from childhood to maturity, and study what puberty and adolescence really mean as developmental stages of human life. ”

“ Student life is perhaps the best of all fields, unworked though it is, for studying the natural history of adolescence. Its modern record is over eight hundred years old and it is marked with the signatures of every age, yet has essential features that do not vary. ”

“ In adolescence, in early adult life, there comes a heavy strain on these two ideas, and unless we have built as we ought, some portion of the edifice will be in danger of falling. The point is, that we must somehow manage to build these two ideas together ”

“ Comparing now the three major groups—early childhood, later childhood, and adolescence—it appears that the plays of early childhood are individualistic, noncompetitive, and for the accomplishment and observation of objective results. The plays of later childhood are individualistic, competitive, involve active muscular co-ordinations and sense judgments. The plays of adolescence are socialistic, demanding the heathen virtues of courage, endurance, self-control, bravery, loyalty, enthusiasm, and the savage occupations of hunting, fishing, swimming, rowing, sailing. ”

“ In late adolescence contrasted with earlier life there is more variation in growth, much greater liability to retrogression, and increased susceptibility to outside influences, unfavourable surroundings, and conditions more readily causing arrest of growth and preventing perfect maturity. ”

“ This strain may be eased if parents will but avoid thinking of themselves as benefactors and children will but remember that the fact of adolescence or post-adolescence does not cancel all the relationships and conditions of earlier life. ”

“ It should rather be explained, not perhaps in a brutally frank manner, but in a way that would lead the boy to see himself as an organic part of society, with definite duties and obligations. If this were done, adolescence might provide us with the raw material for a much greater number of useful and intelligent citizens than it does at present. ”

“ The principal 235causes of our adolescents’ difficulty are the presence of conflicting standards and the belief that every individual should make his or her own choices, coupled with a feeling that choice is an important matter. Given these cultural attitudes, adolescence, regarded now not as a period of physiological change, for we know that physiological puberty need not produce conflict, but as the beginning of mental and emotional maturity, is bound to be filled with conflicts and difficulties. ”

“ The Latin races mature earlier than the Anglo-Saxon; the boy in the tropics reaches puberty more quickly than one in a colder zone; certain abnormalities of physical condition, as well as environment and heredity, conduce to early maturity; and temperamental characteristics contribute, in some degree, to a difference in the time required to traverse the various periods of boyhood. [42] I have known boys of ten who were still infants, and I have in mind a boy friend of sixteen years, with the normal mental development of one of that age, in whom adolescence has not begun. ”

“ CHILD PSYCHOLOGY A SYSTEMATIC knowledge of the powers and limitations of the human mind and soul before maturity and the characteristic changes which they undergo at puberty will throw a flood of light on the boy-problem. ”