Parenting Tips for Teenagers - Understanding Your Teen Changes in Thinking

Failure to understand changes in the way young adolescents think is a leading cause of conflict between parents and teenagers. The intellectual growth spurt of adolescence involves new ways of thinking. Adolescents are entering the world of abstract ideas, hypothetical situations, and formal logic. Unless parents know what to expect, the shift from immature to mature thinking is easy to misinterpret.

Abstract Concepts

Intellectually, children and teenagers are worlds apart. Preadolescent children think in terms of concrete actions and events, things they can see and touch and grasp in their hands. Asked to define fairness, an 8-year-old might say "Giving everyone a turn" or "Dividing the candy bar in half." To a child this age, being religious means going to church on Sunday and behaving properly.

In adolescence, abstract concepts like justice, honesty, and loyalty take on new meaning. Adolescents know that fairness can­not be quantified and measured. They recognize that honesty involves more than simply telling the truth; an honest person examines his own motives. For them, being religious depends on what you believe, not just on what you do. Abstractions add a new layer to the young person's thinking. The simple blacks and whites of childhood—good vs. bad, mean vs. nice, smart vs. stu­pid—give way to gray expanses of uncertainty, ambiguity, and debate.

Possibilities

Expanding mental abilities open adolescents to possibilities. For adolescents, what is real (what exists now) is only one of many possibilities (what could or might exist). Their men­tal horizons are not limited to the immediate environment. They can conceive of a world without war, a society without adults, life with a different set of parents. Thinking about possibilities raises the issue of identity. Adolescents think about how their person­alities and social lives might change in the future. To children, you are who you are: Identity is given. To adolescents, who you are now is only one of many possibilities: Identity is a question mark. It is only a small step from thinking about what could be to thinking about what should be. Visionaries and idealists one day, adolescents can be harsh social critics the next. Their harsh­est criticism is often directed at the ones who are nearest and dearest—themselves and their parents.

Logic and Reason

Adolescence is the age of reason. The teenager's ability to think problems through and to see me logi­cal consequences of different positions or actions is much greater than the child's.

Preadolescent children can understand logic and reason, but they rarely use these mental tools themselves. Presented with a problem, children jump right in. Adolescents stop to consider the best strategy, what they need to know, and how other partici­pants or players might respond to their moves. In a game of Twenty Questions, for example, children typically ask specific questions: "Is it a cat?" or "Is it Michael Jordan?" Adolescents ask categorical questions that progressively limit the possibilities and allow them to gain information from negative answers. "Is it alive?" 'Yes." "Is it animal, not vegetable?" "No." "Is it edible?" The child's questions are random guesses; the adolescent's ques­tions are systematic and strategic.

Logical thinking is not limited to games and schoolwork. Adolescents apply their newfound powers of reasoning to the "game" of family rules and regulations. After dinner, your son picks up his jacket and announces, "I'm going over to Billy's to watch a new video." You respond, "No, you're not! It's a school night." He retorts, "I finished my homework this afternoon. Why do I have to hang around here?" Or your daughter "casually" mentions that a classmate was suspended for smoking marijuana. When you ask what she thinks about her friend's behavior, she says, "She shouldn't have smoked in school." You snap back, "She shouldn't smoke marijuana, period!" "Why?" your daughter asks. 'You and Mommy have a drink before dinner every night. What's the difference?" These adolescents have anticipated their par­ents' reactions and prepared logical rebuttals.

Advanced thinking begins to emerge in early adolescence (or even preadolescence). By 11 or 12, most young people have some grasp of abstract concepts, possibilities, and formal logic. Often, however, these cognitive advances do not jell until middle or late adolescence. Intellectual maturity has a "now you see it, now you don't" quality. A young person may apply advanced logic in some areas (math class) but not in others (managing his allowance), seem intellectual and astute one day but dense and childish another. These inconsistencies are not deliberate. Nor do they mean the young person is mentally lazy. Just as it takes time to adjust to a new body, so it takes time to adjust to a new mind. At times the young adolescent is intellectually awkward and uncoor­dinated.