Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas

Why adolescents sometimes become problematic

Social psychology

Katarna Maov

23.10.2013

Outline
Introduction.................................................................................................................................2
Theoretical research....................................................................................................................3
1.

Problems with adolescents...................................................................................................3

2.

Development........................................................................................................................4
2.1

3.

4.

Stages of development.................................................................................................4

Adolescence.........................................................................................................................4
3.1

Phases of adolescence..................................................................................................4

3.2

Cognitive development in adolescence........................................................................5

3.2.1

Thinking and information processing...................................................................5

3.2.2

Consequences of cognitive change.......................................................................6

3.3

Emotions, self-regulation.............................................................................................6

3.4

Morality........................................................................................................................7

3.5

Personality forming......................................................................................................7

Socialization........................................................................................................................7
4.1

Relationship between parents and adolescents.............................................................8

4.2

Interactions between siblings.......................................................................................9

4.3

Peer relationships.........................................................................................................9

5.

Communication in family..................................................................................................10

6.

Solutions to problems........................................................................................................11

Conclusion................................................................................................................................12
References.................................................................................................................................13

Introduction
Every one of us has to come through changes. We call it development and it has
many stages and parts. When a person is born, it is just a little man, who cannot speak, read,
write, count, who does not know anybody and anything, and its life depends on others. After
few years a baby change into young person adolescent who is becoming independent,
looking for his/her own way and who is expected to become successful adult one day.
Being adolescent consists of many changes and steps that are difficult to pass.
Adolescents have problems to cope with biological, emotional and cognitive changes they
come through. Person as a social being is never alone in life and every decision and action
influences others. So when an adolescent has a problem, family, friends, teachers and whoever
is involved, has problem too.
It is very important to understand that most of these problems are not intended,
adolescents are not happy that they have sudden emotional changes, that they have problems
with making decisions and that there are many demands put on them, such as behave as adult,
but to be obedient as a child.

Theoretical research
1. Problems with adolescents
Adolescence is a stage of development famous for problems between parents and
teenagers. We can describe these problems as complaints. Parents complain about their
childs behaviour and teenager complains about his/her parents style of parenting.
There are three main sources of parent-teenager problems: separation, differentiation
and opposition.
In the case of separation, parents complain about teenagers attempt to avoid
conversation, keeping secrets and ignoring what is going on around them. The teenager
complains how parents check, question and want to know everything, because it is in contrast
with adolescents attempt and societys demand to become more independent.
Adolescents differentiation is another source of conflicts. On the one hand parents
complain about the teenager's new taste in dress and entertainment and friends. On the other
hand teenager complains that, parents criticize, refuse to accept that he or she is growing
older, and tolerating his or her interests is difficult to them.
Third source of problems is adolescents opposition. Parents expect teenager to be
obedient and cooperate at every turn. The teenager complains that parental rules and restraints
are over protective and unduly restrictive of his or her personal freedom that often involves
getting to know him or herself.
If we define these situations right, we cannot use phrase problem unconditionally.
Whereas certain situation is a problem depends on every individuals judgement. It is a
perception that something is happening or not happening that is considered not okay, wrong or
absolutely or relatively okay. We also have to mention that many situations are not
problematic from the beginning or intentionally. It often happens that labelling a thing as
problematic may increase negative atmosphere and create new, much bigger conflict.
For better understanding why there are such significant changes in parent-teenager
relationship and why there are so many problems and conflicts during this period of life, it is
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crucial to understand what changes and challenges is each adolescent undergoing, such as
cognitive and emotional development and continuing socialization.

2. Development
According to David Shaffer, development refers to systematic continuities and
changes in the individual that occur between conception (when the fathers sperm penetrates
the mothers ovum, creating a new organism) and death (2007). With every step we take,
every choice and words we say and hear, we grow up and learn something. We may also say
that we develop. Psychologists such as Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, Jean Piaget and others
tried to notice when, how and why we develop and they stated and described numerous
stages, phases and milestones of peoples development.
2.1 Stages of development
In general we distinguish 8 ground stages of development:
Prenatal, infancy and toddlerhood, early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, early
adulthood, middle adulthood and late adulthood.
Each of these stages consists of more sub-stages. There are many milestones which
are not taken as sole stages, but they are very important for healthy development and growing.

3. Adolescence
Adolescence can be defined as a stage between childhood and adulthood. It is a stage
when a complex change of ones personality takes place. Nowadays, adolescents understand
childhood as an age that should be left quickly and they try to be like adults as much as they
can, in every aspect of life. Independence, rights and freedom in making decisions is the main
goal. However duties and responsibility are accepted very unwillingly (Vgnerov, 2008).
Adolescence is also a period of consolidation of the social self, of ones identity and
understanding of the self in relation to the social world (Coleman and Hendry, 1990).
3.1 Phases of adolescence
We divide adolescence into two phases: early adolescence and late adolescence:
Early adolescence:
- usually lasts for 5 years in the age of 11 to 15
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it consists of marked body changes, change in the way of thinking, emotions (well-

known moods changes), attempt to be different from children and adults

late adolescence:
- following 5 years, usually in the age of 16 to 20
- typical are graduating from school, first sexual experiences, start of financial
independence, relationships development, mainly partnership

3.2 Cognitive development in adolescence

Crucial part of development during adolescence is its cognitive part. When
neurophysiological development is done and an adolescent has enough experiences from
learning, cognitive development can proceed (Vgnerov, 2008).
3.2.1

Thinking and information processing

According to Piaget, formal operations, first seen between the ages of 11 and 13

years of age, are mental actions performed on ideas and propositions. No longer is thinking
tied to the factual or observable, for formal operators can reason quite logically about
hypothetical processes and events that may have no basis in reality (Shaffer, 2007).
The major changes in thinking are:

Seeing more possibilities ability that allows young people to understand, respect and

think about different opinions and options.

Unlike children, adolescents think in abstract way. This is the way adolescents are able to

imagine themselves in different job positions and in different.

Thinking about future and past adolescents start to consider their past actions and
decisions to make future steps. Adolescents are often asked to make important decisions,

about school, first job and close relationships.

Hypothetical thinking critical for most forms of mathematics beyond simple arithmetic.
If 2X + 5 = 15, what does X equal? It is an arbitrary, hypothetical problem that can be
answered only if it is approached abstractly, using a symbol system that does not require
concrete referents (Shaffer, 2007).
These capacities do not appear suddenly, around the time of puberty. Rather, gains

occur gradually from childhood on (Keating, 2004; Kuhn & Franklin, 2006; Moshman, 2005).
In the case of information processing there are many changes in:

Attention becomes more selective (focused on relevant information) and better-adapted

to the changing demands of tasks (Berk, 2006),

Strategies become more effective,
Knowledge increases,
Speed of thinking and processing increases.
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3.2.2

Consequences of cognitive change

The development of increasingly complex, effective thinking leads to dramatic

revisions in the way adolescents see themselves, others, and the world in general (Berk,
2006).

Imaginary audience adolescents belief that they are the focus of everyone elses

attention and concern (Elkind & Bowen, 1979).

Personal fable feeling special a unique.
Adolescents are used to be radical. Radicalism is a protection from uncertainty and

ambiguity. Utterances of radicalism are abbreviatory generalized reactions (Vgnerov,

2008).
By increasing capacity to think about all possibilities allows adolescents to imagine
ideal and perfect world. They imagine perfect world with no discrimination or injustice. The
disparity between adults and teenagers worldviews, often called the generation gap,
creates tension between parent and child (Berk, 2006). Once adolescents become to see other
people as having both strengths and weaknesses, they have a much greater capacity to work
constructively for social change and to form positive and lasting relationships (Elkind, 1994).
3.3 Emotions, self-regulation
Hormonal changes in adolescence have significant influence on emotions. Emotional
reactions are less appropriate, more intense, short-time and quickly changing. Adolescents are
shocked by the change of their own emotions, their feelings and mood changes use to be
uncomfortable to them (Vgnerov, 2008). They do not know the reason of these moods
changes and it drives them upset.
Adolescents are more impulsive, hardly controlling their emotions and emotional
egocentrism makes them feel like nobody else feels the same, no one can understand their
unique feelings. Also they do not tend to show their emotions because of fear of
misunderstanding, shame and mockery.
Moods changes have disturbing effects on the vicinity. Low tolerance and
hypersensitivity create conflicts in relationships. They are not well accepted and criticism
from other people leads to negative emotions. Tendency to bad mood and depressive thinking
increases and it leads to interpersonal problems.
Despite an individuals move toward autonomy in adolescence, parents likely remain
an important influence in the emotional lives of their adolescent children (Larson et al., 1996).
As adolescents proceed with establishing autonomy, emotion coaching practices that were of
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critical importance in early childhood (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1997) may give way to
alternative practices. It may be important for parents to model emotion regulation for older
children (Katz & Hunter, 2007). Even when adolescents come to understand their emotional
states on their own, their ability to regulate their emotions is not well developed yet.
3.4 Morality
Young people in adolescence are in the stage of autonomous morality. For them rules
are more flexible than fixed, dependant on situation and context. Most of them follow the
Golden rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Kohlberg proposed 6 six stages of moral maturity. He emphasized that it is the way
an individual reasons about the dilemma, not the content of the response that determines
moral maturity (Berk, 2006). This is similar to adolescents effort to create their own personal
values while becoming to understand their identity. Differences between adolescents rules
and authorities ones often create conflicts, because they rarely follow conventions and law.
There are many factors influencing adolescents moral reasoning, such as parenting
practices, schooling and teachers, peer interactions, culture and mass media. Adolescents who
are Christians, Jews or they worship any religion also experience conflict between obeying
law, convections, religious rules and their own beliefs.
3.5 Personality forming
Adolescents try to from their new personality according to their beliefs and rules.
They go deep to understand who they are. This awareness of own traits often force young
people to consider them and change traits that are not appropriate anymore. Adolescent is put
into multiple gradual changing and uncertainty and it costs significant effort to cope with
(Vgnerov, 2008). Very important is to be able to accept one-self.
One way of getting to know our own personality is comparing it with others. When
adolescents find a role model of their ideal traits combination they will try to copy it. They
also need to feel they are part of something, so they join groups and gain group identity.

4. Socialization
Relationships change in early adolescence. Adolescents start to refuse submissive
status, because they can think about other possibilities than are suggested or required. Infinite
arguments with adults comports them, because these confirm the value of their own abilities

(Vgnerov, 2008). Criticism against adults and peers is the same, but it looks more
unacceptably against adults, because it is something new, that used to be a taboo.
Adolescents graduate from school, they are accepted to another, they find first job
and join social groups. They are expected to be obedient to authorities, but to be creative and
independent too, that puts them in the position where they are completely lost and uncertain.
4.1 Relationship between parents and adolescents
Social institutions and groups are very important for health development. One of
them is a family. Throughout adolescence, the quality of the parent-child relationship is the
single most consistent predictor of mental health (Steinberg & Silk, 2002). In wellfunctioning families, teenagers remain attached to parents and seek their advice, but they do
so in a context of greater freedom (Steinberg, 2001).
While during previous developmental stages children search for physical contact, due
to inner model based on representation of the relationship with loving person, in early
adolescence young people start to search for contact on the mental level (Michalkov,
Lacinov, Boua, Kotkov, 2010). In this period parents provide adolescents with feeling of
safety and help them regulate stress in situation that cause fear (Scharf & Mayseless, 2007).
Adolescents start to minimize dependence on their parents, they try to become independent.
Parent becomes a partner, who is much more equal to child than superior. The main mission is
to support adolescents to gain autonomy.
In this period of life, a fear occurs in new dimension. Fear from family and fear
about family. Fear about family is expressed differently from girls and boys. Girls naturally
fear about family independently on the quality of family relationships. Boys fear about family
more when relationship with parents is full of trust, acceptance and opened communication
(Michalkov, Lacinov, Boua, Kotkov, 2010).
Fear from parents increase with increasing age. Period between childhood and
adolescence is connected with beginning of process of separation from parents and
accompanying exploration is often connected with conflict situations which usually require
reconstruction of family rules and norms (Laursen, Coy & Collins, 1998). Boys fear from
punishment no matter on the relationship with parents, while girls fear less if they have good
relationship with at least one of parents.

4.2 Interactions between siblings

Although they are members of the same family, childrens and adolescents roles,
relationship experiences and daily activities with siblings are distinct from those with parents
(Tucker, C. J., & Updegraff, K. 2009).
In adolescence sibling relationships often become less intense, in both positive and
negative feelings (Stocker & Dunn, 1994). Brothers and sisters who established a positive
bond in early childhood and whose parents continue to be warm and involved are more likely
to express affection and caring (Dunn, Slomkowski & Beardsall, 1994). Relationship between
siblings provides opportunities of guidance from more experienced sibling, that younger
siblings often call funny-parenting. Support from parents may decrease, but siblings
relationship is relatively stable and supportive in adolescence.
However, reciprocal support roles in adolescent sibling relationships are not always
associated with healthy development. Some siblings actively engage in deviant activities
together and encourage and support each others involvement in such behaviours, being
described as partners in crime and co-conspirators (Slomkowski et al., 2001).
Siblings of the same gender who are close in age report receiving relatively more
support than siblings of disparate gender and ages (Branje et al., 2004; Tucker, Barber, &
Eccles, 1997).
4.3 Peer relationships
During adolescence, children spend increasingly more time with friends and their
need to belong to a group and to be accepted by peers is higher than during other periods in
life (Coleman, 1980). Since teenagers often look for love and acceptance through peer identity
groups, particularly as family culture erodes, peer group identity becomes a central factor in
the process of development (Harnett, 2007).
Peer groups establish a social environment that influence how
group members behave. Individuals may seek and reinforce their affiliation
to certain groups by acquiring and fitting into their norms (Tarrant, 2002).
Therefore, groups may socialize individuals by defining a desired profile
(Berger, 2011).
Positive peer relationships become increasingly important in young people's overall
development and well-being during early adolescence (Oberle, Schonert-Reichl, & Thomson,
2010; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Particularly, studies on peer acceptance during the
middle school years indicate that early adolescents who are popular, accepted, and have
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positive relationships with their peers also tend to be socially well-adjusted and academically
more successful than those who are rejected by their peers (e.g., Bierman, 2004; Furrer &
Skinner, 2003; Vronneau & Vitaro, 2007; Wentzel, 1991; Wentzel & Caldwell, 1997).
A group of high achieving peers reflects an established value of academic achievement and
school engagement in the group, which sets a positive norm for group members (Witkow &
Fuligni, 2010).
Social learning theory specifies that peers may influence each other by observing,
modelling and imitating behaviour of important individuals in their environment (Bandura,
1986). Several studies have shown that aggression and prosociality are social behaviours
susceptible to peer influence (Chang, 2004; Ellis & Zarbatany, 2007). In other words,
aggression might in some narrow sense support social adaptation and fitting in, and prosocial
behaviour might be an important support for social functioning (Berger, 2011).

5. Communication in family
Communication is the main process of all social interactions because it enables
information exchange. The way people communicate depends on social relationships which
are also reflected in this interaction.
The quality of communication reflects functioning of a family system as a whole.
Family communication within a context of family functionality relates to abilities to listen to
speech, self-opening, sending clear messages, showing of consideration and respect. When it
comes to abilities to listen, the accent is on empathy and careful listening. Modern family
represents an emotional unit, which indicates the importance of interpersonal communication
and it does not stand only for exchanging of information but also for family members to share
together the feelings expressing themselves. The functioning of family system depends on
capability of that very system to communicate on an adequate manner, to transfer information,
to exchange .Good communicative capabilities enable families to clearly present their type of
relation they would like to have in the field of cohesion and adaptability. Again it is
communication which is linked to the affective climate of interpersonal interactions
(Todorovi, Matejevi, Simi, 2012).
Adolescents who frequently eat meals with their family are healthier, they do not
have eating disorders, do not smoke, drink alcohol or use drugs and have higher school
achievements.

Gathering at the table gives teens and their parents the opportunity to

converse, express their feelings, and provide support to each other, which is important for
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reinforcing the social bonds between them and building a sense of family togetherness (Fiese
et al., 2002; Ochs & Shohet, 2006)
Communication between adolescents and parents presents some special problems
and opportunities as compared with parent-child communication at other stages of the family
life cycle. As Olson et al. (1983) suggest, it is at this stage of the family life cycle that one is
likely to hear complaints about poor communication (Masselam, 1990).
Indeed, parental understanding of the adolescents self-concept has been shown to be
associated with frequent and open communication, as well as high levels of satisfaction with
the parentchild relationship (Sillars, Koerner, & Fitzpatrick, 2005). Parents who more
accurately perceived their adolescents thoughts and feelings reported more positive outcomes
to conflicts (Hastings & Grusec, 1997).
It is demonstrated that adolescents minimize aspects of family life, such as positive
communication, in order to separate and achieve independence from parents. Still adolescentparents relationship is essential for healthy development of adolescents.

6. Solutions to problems
Despite enormous amount of attempts to find efficient solutions to problems with
adolescents, there are no universal methods. However, there are three ways how parents may
fix the problems, to achieve how they want things to be.
First way is to change things to make them how parents want them to be. This way is
favourable for parents and this solution is usually preferred by those parents who are
authoritative. Teenager is forced to be obedient, although it may be source of new, more
significant problems, because teenagers will and right to make his/her own decisions are
suppressed. Parents who have been mostly liberal in rearing may destroy teenagers positive
opinion about them.
Another way is that parents change what they want. This is extremely liberal way of
solving problems, because teenager is allowed to do whatever he/she wants. On the one hand,
an adolescent is satisfied that there are no restrictions, but on the other hand, he/she may have
bad opinion about parents competencies and power. This may lead to abusing that freedom.
Golden mean is as mostly the best way how to deal with any complaint. In this case
it is called compromise between parents and adolescent, which consists of some loss for both
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sides. Parents may give way to some restrictions and rules and adolescent may be obedient in
important issues and be more open to communication with the parents.

Conclusion
Adolescence is challenging period of life which comes with various novelties, such
as never ending conflicts between parents and their teenagers. It is said that adolescents are
very problematic and cause many problems. No one can say it is not truth. But each coin has
two sides. It is crucial to understand, that each teenager undergoes significant changes in
his/her life that are difficult to pass.
Emotional changes, development of cognitive functions and socialization are main
sources of imbalanced behaviours of adolescents. Also societys demands and expectations
are often in contrast with what parents want from their teenagers. They are supposed to get
more responsible, independent, more adult, but there are still expected to be obedient to
parents at every turn.
Such demands may cause for adolescents inner conflicts that are difficult to cope
with and there is great need for parents support and understanding. Healthy communication is
crucial for good relationships in family, also listening to others needs and desire is important.
Like in every conflict, the easiest way to solve problem is a compromise. If both
sides, parents and teenager give way to some of their requirements, there is a big chance for
friendly understanding. Of course, each teenager is unique and it is parents mission to know
their child, to understand him/her and to be able to be efficient and loving support.
What you get is what you give.

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