Psychology Middle Adolescence		Middle adolescence is a different ballgame altogether for kids. They're now 14-17 years old. There is a lot more friction between parents and their kids during this period. The parents and the teens are miserable, because they simply don't get along. Many families can't talk about anything without fighting. They have increased interest in their peer group, which becomes transiently more important than their families. This can be very hurtful for parents. Parents many times aren't quite sure where they stand with their kids. This is when parents start to bring their kids in for exams and they'll say to me, "Here, talk to him about sex (or violence) because I have no clue. I don't know how I would even start talking with my kids about that!" Conformity with their peer values is key at this age. They are focused on being attractive to their peers. I have discussions every single day with kids where I say, "If you hang around with people who want to get somewhere in this world and who want to be successful, guess what? If you hang around with them, you're going to be successful too! If you hang around with people who don't feel like getting to class, who don't feel like going to school, period, who don't have any short or long term goals, guess what? You may not either!" And this reality scares parents a lot. Remember, you want to tell parents, it's really important, especially during this time, to engage yourself and involve yourself in your child's life, even though they may not welcome that. You need to know their friends, you need to know who they're hanging around with. They are starting to become more abstract in their thinking, but guess what - they relapse into more concrete thinking when they get stressed out about stuff. One of the scariest things is that some of these kids are driving. In the state of New Jersey, where I came from, you could not drive a car independently until you were 18 years old. I loved that law because it gave them 2-3 years of supervised driving, when they had to pack in the hours of experience in order to get behind the wheel of a car. We don't have that here in Michigan, but I think that we are headed in that direction. There is a book that I am having my adolescent residents read, called "The Romance of Risk". It's a great title, because you would be amazed at how risky behavior is at this time of their lives - things that they think are pretty normal. Things that we take for granted, things that we think are pretty common sense decisions, they really don't see at all. For instance, the other night, there was a young lady with four of her friends in the car driving 95 mph down I-94, getting very close to traffic, looking to cause an accident, maybe intentionally, maybe not, maybe she was sober, maybe she wasn't. Very important to remember, they have a sense of "immortality" at this age. Return to top of page