Adolescent

“ ADOLESCENCE The Adolescent Period Is a Time of "Storm and Stress," When the Chief Crises of Life Arise
Most writers on psychology recognize in the life history of the child several more or less distinct periods of development. The child is almost a different being at different levels of his growth. Each period is marked by peculiar physical, mental and moral characteristics which demand specific treatment. ”

“ In the elementary school the pupil is a child, with the mind, the tastes, the ambitions of a child, and he should be allowed to remain a child. The ends in view are right habits, [Pg 231] right ideals, and knowledge facts. In the secondary school the student is an adolescent, with the mind of an adolescent, having peculiar and erratic tastes, changing ambitions, and conflicting emotions. ”

“ The book which furnishes entertainment as well as inspires interest commands the attention of the adolescent in the direct ratio that these elements conform to his psychological development. Juvenile fiction is usually interesting to the adult only when read from the juvenile viewpoint. ”

“ The interests of the adolescent boy are general and not specialized between the twelfth and eighteenth years. The boy gets his impressions of the community objectively, in addition to increasing his knowledge of the external world through his acquaintanceship with its phenomena. The Universe and the Community are extensive and many sided. The step also between twelve and eighteen years is short. The boy's contact with these, then, must be rapid and general. ”

“ The advantage, it has been observed, which the parent, relative, or instructer, derives, from himself in forming the adolescent in the new faculty which is developed in him, is to prevent his choosing, among corrupt servants or ignorant youths of his own age, the confidants of his passion. The parent or instructer, moreover, is then justly entitled to, and has gratefully given to him, the entire confidence of the adolescent; and he is thereby enabled exactly to appreciate the degree of power of the propensity which he desires to divert or to guide. ”

“ Much depends on the circumstances and people surrounding the adolescent. Her unbounded capacity for hero-worship leads in many instances to a conscious or unconscious copying of parent, guardian, or teacher; and although the ideals of the young are apt to far outpace those of the adult whose days of illusion are over, yet they are probably formed on the same type. ”

“ In the adolescent boy these may roughly be classed as the heroic and reflective stages, or as early, middle, and late adolescence. Boy activities, then, must group themselves to minister to the needs of each separate stage in order to work effectively. But psychology has also shown us that the activities of any one stage must also be graded to meet the needs of that one stage. Thus the heroic may run from the twelfth to the fifteenth year, and the activities of this phase should be graded to meet the development of the phase. ”

“ So far, however, as the mechanisms of curriculum and instruction are concerned, students are not males, not females, but sheer intellects, uncontaminated by such a vital propulsion, or by any of the others whose development, gratification, obstruction, deviation, realization, or repression, compose the dynamic units of personality in the living adolescent, determining its timbre, emotional quality and behavior pattern. ”

“ The one unpardonable thing for the adolescent is dullness, stupidity, lack of life, interest, and enthusiasm in school or teachers, and, perhaps above all, too great stringency. Least of all, at this stage, can the curriculum school be an ossuary. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity. ”

“ Now, in the case of boys especially, it may happen that these dull adolescents lie in wait to bully and tease the young gifted boy, whose "book-learning" they detest and whose immaturity suggests the term "baby." ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the beginning of the period of childhood for which the Junior Course is intended, approximately nine years of age, there appears to be in the life of the normal boy or girl a real transition as the traits and interests of earlier years give way to those of full fledged boyhood and girlhood. Strange premonitions of impending physical and mental changes now appear, with suggestions of riper years that are rapidly approaching. The physical and mental changes of this period are accompanied by an awakening of social consciousness. ”

“ The pure but ignorant boy going for the first time into the new life of the school, looking up to the older boys with that peculiar veneration the younger boy almost always feels for the older, moved in his senses by what he hears and sees, may speedily forget such home warnings as seem vague and pointless, and he may yield himself to a course most disastrous to his future. ”

“ THE BOY’S VIEWPOINT A CORRECT understanding of boy-nature is conditioned on one’s ability to obtain his point of view, which differs widely from that of the adult. It has been stated in a previous chapter that the viewpoints of a boy at six, ten, fourteen, and eighteen years of age differ as widely from each other as those of four adults of remotely differing natures and temperaments. We frequently make the mistake of assuming that the boy is a small edition of a man, possessing faculties, emotions, desires, and understanding the same as in the adult but developed in a lesser degree. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In exploring such sources we soon see how few writers have given true pictures of the chief traits of this developmental period, which can rarely be ascertained with accuracy. The adult finds it hard to recall the emotional and instinctive life of the teens which is banished without a trace, save as scattered hints may be gathered from diaries, chance experiences, or the recollections of others. But the best observers see but very little of what goes on in the youthful soul, the development of which is very largely subterranean. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A further compensation attached to teaching is that of inspirational companionship. It is a blessed privilege to enjoy the sunshine of youth. Every pupil contributes an association with one of God's choice spirits. To live and work with children and adolescents is one of the finest of safeguards against old age. The teacher not only partakes of the joy of his group—they constitute him a link between his generation and theirs. Their newness of life, their optimism, their spontaneity, their joy, they gladly pass on to their teacher. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Parents, teachers, but preferably the school physician, should begin with children of six a clean initiation into these mysteries—absorbing even to youngsters of that tender age—to replace the hitherto regnant nasty one wrought by child lore handed down, from mouth to mouth, through the centuries, and characterized by unprintable words, in uttering, seeing, and hearing which numerous children seem to take delight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The boy’s school life soon begins to develop self-reliance, full of possibilities, of curiosity and questionings, the period of formation of thoughts, feelings and desires. And when a boy reaches that stage in his life when he is permitted to go down town alone—he at once begins a new life. ”

“ We stood to each other from boyhood upwards in every possible relation, whether of an educational, warlike, delicate, or social character, which the warm and fitful feelings peculiar to boyhood and youth can produce. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every sentence arrests, and the sympathy with boy-life, as well as the compelling earnestness of the diction, must grip any boy-audience in quite an unusual manner. The style is manly, non-sentimental, and is suitable for boys aged eleven to sixteen. ”

“ 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? ”

“ This is what our pious friends mean when they say, "Give me the child until he is ten years old and you may have him afterward." That is, they can take the child in his plastic age and make impressions on his mind that are indelible. ”

“ As you say, a half-year has been a long time—to a child. I had just come from abroad then with my parents, and I had been most of the time in a school where girls are just children, no matter what their ages. ”

“ The real heroes of the school, if only the dear old gentleman would realise, or remember, the fact, are those rather dull-looking youths, with incipient moustaches and large chests, who sit cracking nuts in the back row. ”

“ This little book, which still appeals to the juvenile mind,—a new edition was put out as lately as 1899,—has had a singular charm, not only for boys, but for those grown men who never quite lose the heart of boyhood. ”

“ In this book I have endeavored to relate the story of a boy's early experiences in college life—a boy who was neither unnaturally good nor preternaturally bad, wholesome, earnest, impulsive, making just such mistakes as a normal boy would make, and yet earnest, sincere, and healthy. We all have known just such boys and are grateful that they are neither uncommon nor unknown. ”

“ The universality of its appeal to boyhood is shown by its membership which is recruited from all ranks of society—from the slum to the palace. It touches the boy on every side of his manifold interests. ”

“ Accordingly, at this stage it becomes incumbent on the adult to attach himself to the boy, to restrain him, to divide the time for him, and to circumscribe the fancies born of his self-confidence,—a course of action rendered all the more necessary by the circumstance that the boy is a stranger as yet to the timidity with which the youth joins the ranks of men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the exuberant frolic someness of their years. ”

“ At that time the youth begins to replace his longing with poetic fancies in order to compensate for the deficiency. To approximate the psychology of a four-year-old child to that of the age of puberty will at first sight seem paradoxical, the relationship lies, however, not in the age but rather in the mechanism. ”

“ The boy of ten who is sent away from home to a private school finds that he has to take absolutely new views of life in almost every particular. Perplexed by the new horizon, the novel atmosphere, and with his young heart aching for home tenderness and affection, he is assisted in adjusting himself to his altered circumstances by bullying and sneers. ”