A teenager is a young person in the age range of thirteen to nineteen years. This is a young person full of excitement and wonder. The teenage person is just leaving the formative years of development and is eager to move to adulthood although not old enough to assume full adult responsibilities. The new found freedom from the continual oversight of parents and teachers brings about some feeling of exuberance. This period offers opportunities for fascinating school and other social activities including early relationships with the opposite sexes bringing along with it anxieties about important choices to make regarding marriage, career, profession, and what the future could hold. A teenager is often faced with the feeling of insecurity and nervousness stemming from immaturity to make those important decisions or carry out imminent adult responsibilities. Yes, a teenager is certainly in a wonderful and difficult period of years.
A teenager is in a period of transition as we can see. This condition brings along with it peculiar challenges. Beginning with the observable physical changes, there are also other developmental changes necessary to prepare them for adulthood. This is known as puberty marking a dumpy road to maturity.
Hence, a teenager is one who is in a state requiring the greatest attention and guidance by parents and teachers. This necessary training is detailed in the eBook, Proper Parenting by C.N.C. Ejiofor, and much of its contents is published in the blog site cncejiofor.blogspot.com which an interested person can visit and read free of charge. There is permission to print individual copies from the blog site for personal use only.
A teenager is what can be described as a most amazing paradox – unstable physically and emotionally. Giggling at the point he is expected to be dignified yet suddenly developing throat lump in a humorous situation. He may accept responsibility and fail to carry it out or do the reverse, refuse to accept responsibility and unexpectedly goes ahead to carry it out later. A teenager, then, can best be described as unpredictable.
A teenager has a rapidly maturing body and intellect. This rapid growth of their bodies orchestrate evidences of awkwardness and poor co-ordination of mental and physical activities for the very tall and huge ones. Smaller teenagers and late developers also have their peculiar problems due to their sizes. The teenage years may be their most difficult years, because their great differences in development create a great variety of attitudes and self- concepts, either helpful or detrimental. Most of these difficulties are equally quickly resolved.
There are great upheavals too intellectually for the teenagers. Their mental powers are approaching maturity and hence cry out for challenges and for solid adult answers. Teenagers may demand proof for explanations unlike in their earlier childhood days.
A teenager is in the crystallizing stage of life that is, settling in their individual molds. This period of development makes them vulnerable and pliable and needs to be maximized by parents and teachers to ensure that they are guided to settle with proper and acceptable behaviors and characters. Like fresh concrete mixture, they are impossible to reshape once they are allowed to set given the short period after casting or pouring. Parents have the first three to five years of a child’s life and up to this teen age to ensure that the right character traits and behaviors are properly entrenched in the life of the child otherwise, once set, the child cannot be reshaped unless there occurs a forceful supernatural experience later in adulthood. This is very important to note.
A teenager is a bundle of possibilities. Teenagers hold all the hopes and dreams of parents, teachers and the society at large for the future. Teenagers are a real investment for the wise parent or teacher. While we are very keen in investing financially in our children, parents are called to invest time as well and guide their children to become men of God. Why? God the creator has the sole ownership rights to all creation and as such his blueprint for life and conduct are sacrosanct. The world would be a paradise had all our leaders, professionals and citizens been men of God indeed!
A teenager is an idealist, possibly a perfectionist. This idealism gives the teenager optimism and hope for tomorrow’s world. Parents need not puncture this posture of the teenager with the gloomy pictures of the future deriving from their disappointing experiences of the past and present. At best, parents and teachers can trustfully let the teenager alone having guided them to follow the ways of God who after all is omniscient and holds the future in his own omnipotent hands.
A teenager is full of energy and capability but lacks experience not surprisingly. This lack of experience can bring him into difficulty if he is allowed to row his boat alone in the streams of life without the necessary experience that makes for good judgment. Parents and teachers can always be handy to guide teenagers tactfully, though, at such adventurous periods of time as they occur.
A teenager is one full of passion for popularity. He likes to belong where it is happening. He yearns for his age mates’ acceptance and liking. He sees himself through the eyes of others He lacks the power of self-evaluation, so to speak. He likes to go with the crowd in order to gain popularity. This informs why teenagers are mad about knick names.
A teenager likes to conform to the trending events, like
speech styles, mannerisms, and dressing, to be accepted by the particular group
he longs to belong.
A teenager is very self-conscious, being very sensitive
about the impression he makes on others. This results in timidity and
nervousness especially if he has to engage the public. He is mostly concerned
about what people say and think of him and how he looks in other peoples view.
This is partly what makes the teenager want to find security in the group that
accepts him, no matter how obscure the group.
Comments
Post a Comment