The teenage years are full of questioning and making connections between ideas and concepts. Your teen first connects ideas to her perceptions of herself, and gradually shifts toward an understanding of the world in general. Many of these questions and applications can seem self-involved and rebellious. Think of them, instead, as practice for understanding how things interrelate, especially how your teen fits into the greater community.
General Learning Tasks of Adolescence
Adolescent brain development focuses on organizing ideas and concepts; developing the capacity for abstract thought; understanding peer relationships, moral development and emotional regulation; and determining a career path. These general tasks work together as your teen grows and matures in order to prepare her for life as an independent adult. Emotional regulation is a critical task because without it, it is very difficult to absorb new ideas or think rationally and clearly. Once a teen is able to self-regulate, she is able to begin organizing her thoughts, make plans for the future, and use the information she learns in school to develop new interests and meet her goals.
Early Adolescence: Middle School
As a child enters into adolescence, his thoughts and learning strategies typically remain concrete. Rapid body changes challenge his ability to regulate his emotions and a tendency toward impulsivity and egocentrism makes it difficult for him to focus on situations separate from himself. For example, a fight with a friend can make it extremely difficult for a 12-year-old to focus on school work.
In addition, immature brain development makes it difficult for the young teen in early adolescence to organize his thoughts and plan strategies for problem solving. The messy state of most young teens' rooms, notebooks and backpacks indicates disorganization as much as rebellion for many middler-schoolers. At school, concrete thinking combined with the early neural organization tasks of early adolescence makes it difficult for many young teens to perform analysis tasks such as formulating a hypothesis to solve a problem and citing evidence to support an idea.
Middle Adolescence: High School
By high school, most teens can think abstractly and use critical thinking strategies most of the time. As these skills develop, teens begin to extensively question ideas and the world around them. They may question the justification of certain rules or laws, the need to study certain subjects, or the validity of scientific ideas. This process not only helps your teen further develop a separate identify from you, but it helps her focus on the subjects she is most interested in as a potential career. Questioning, critical thinking skills and abstract reasoning develop a new depth as the frontal cortex of your teen's brain develops more fully. In response, your child may be eager for more abstract subjects at school, such ethics, which allow her to practice these newly developing skills.
Late Adolescence: Young Adults
As your child completes adolescence and enters adulthood, his ability to think abstractly and critically analyze ideas continues to develop. Many late teens become very focused on idealized versions of politics and cultural norms. A period of political activism, for example, is very common among college students. Learning focuses on further developing critical thinking skills, especially as they relate to your teen's specific interests. Some of this energy is directed toward the requirements for your teen's chosen field of study, but continued testing and exploration of ideas, sometimes leading to frequent changes in academic majors, is also common.
References
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Child and Adolescent Development Research and Teacher Education: Evidence-based Pedagogy, Policy and Practice; December 2005
- Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford; Cognitive Development
- American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry; The Teen Brain: Behavior, Problem Solving and Decision Making; September 2008
