Ch1: Dealing with adolescent problems

Ch1: Dealing with adolescent problems

1. Physical and biological factors

   • Effects of the onset of puberty
   • A lot of physical, cognitive and Psychological changes
   • Biological change affects every aspect of adolescent's life - influences:
     • Psychological factors
     • sociocultural factors
     • biological factors
   • What changes?
     • Height and weight accelerate
     • Sexual characteristics become evident
     • Mature reproductive capacity develops
     • Further growth and differentiation of cognitive ability
   • Waking up to realisation that they will soon be fully adult
   • Proliferation of worries
     • will all their new body bits ever grow/chang/work
     • Secrecy and embarrassment about the body and body image
   • How to address anxieties
     • Educator must be a role model
     • Tolerate anxieties
     • Reassure them
     • Show them how to manage anxieties

2. Erikson's contribution

   • Significant influences
     • Peer groups
     • Role models for leadership
   • time for debate what it means to be
     • Anxiety arising from this debate
     • preoccupation with death, disaster, sex and love (poetry)
     • Identity formation linked with biological changes of puberty
   • Educator's role
     • Educators have a responsibility to help learners negotiate their way through this stage effectively
       • Cannot solve their problems
       • Cannot guarantee every learner will successfully negotiate stage
     • Encouraging and strengthening the former stage & counteracting and diminishing the effects of the later stage
   • Key task = identity versus role confusion
     • Make a role for yourself
     • Don't confuse your role with others'

3. Implication for you as pastoral educator

   • be aware of sociocultural demands of the local and national context in which the school operates
   • Young people need the ethical soundness & rational consistency of society and world to establish a stable identity and find meaning in life
   • Contribute to successful accomplishment of developmental tasks
   • Work may contain elements of counsellors, priests or social workers

4. Name assets from previous successful negotiation of life stages

   • Knowing what it means to be listened to/
   • views are taken seriously
   • not being pressurised to perform

5. Psychological liabilities from previous stage

   • Fear of being nobody
   • feelings of neurosis rather than true guilt
   • Fear of being in the mainstream
   • Fear of being unable to cope with the world

6. 3 Views on adolescence

   • Near sickness/ difficult but inevitable period of sturm und drang
     • Expect erratic & over the top emotions/scatterbrained and uncertain about themselves
   • Some say there is no biological law that dictates that the phase of physiological development is accompanied by sorm and stress
   • Adolescence does not really exist in any other than purely biological sense
     • It is the sociocultural creation of increasingly leasured, technocratic, liberal, Western, pluralistic societies
   • Developmental psychology
     • Change in physical appearance
     • Onset in ability to produce
     • Identity formation

7. Problems you may encounter when doing your job well

   • Boundary issues
     • what you should deal with and what you should refer
   • Time management & prioritisation
     • Good admin skills
     • boundaries on when, where & how long to listen
     • determine seriousness of issue
   • Co-depency relationships
     • teach learner to take responsibility of own problems
     • Learn to find solutions to emotional and other difficulties through own reasoning, friendships and relationships with adult educators