Does Only Physical Development Occur in Adolescence?

Adolescence is the period of self-personality formation

Meaning of Adolescence

In general term, adolescence might have defined as teenage years as the human growth. As it is stated as teen-age, this term continuously starts from the age of thirteen to nineteen. Subsequently, it is also called as the growing age from children state to adult condition. However, some people believe that the only important aspect during these ages is the growth of physical appearance such as the body mass, height, and even more the sexual desire. Nevertheless, another crucial factors are being avoided that can affect the children's personality. What are the other developments that must be considered to monitor?

Puberty state

Puberty state is the beginning state of child development. The children transforms biologically in certain aspects including the changing of voices, the growth of hair in specific body parts such as armpit and genital area, as well as the sexual reproduction. As it occurs mainly in certain body parts, puberty is also defined as biological transition in particular in term of sexual reproduction. Although cultural and social environment may have influenced the transition greatly, typical indicator happens when the children experience the secretion of reproduction hormone in form of wet dreams for boys or fist menstrual period for girls. This physical and biological maturation varies widely depending on the biological mechanisms, but, mostly it happens for eighteen months to six years in girls, while two to five years in boys.

Emotional transition state

As it is mentioned previously that hormone of reproduction occurs, the most dramatic changes can be observed from not only the physical appearance, but it is also in emotional development. In this period, children perspectives change differently in self-conceptions.

During adolescence, important shifts occur in the way persons think and characterize their self-personality. Compared with children, who tend to describe themselves in relatively simple, concrete terms, in this transition phase, they are more likely to employ complex, abstract, and psychological characterizations such as do I look beautiful and handsome on these clothing? does someone get interested if I wear this sneakers, shoes? As a result, their understanding focuses on self-esteem rather than any other aspects.

Cognitive transition state

The next non-physical appearance change occurs in the cognitive functions of adolescence. According to the Gale Encyclopedia, the cognitive transition state can be observed in five ways. The first one is their ability in thinking the possible outcome. As during children, they tend to think straightforwardly, an adolescent individual proceeds to think hypothetically. Secondly, this hypothetical thinking leads them to make predictions outcome in form of abstract idea. In this stage, they start to think what is the meaning of friendship, honesty, fairness, and faith.

The next observation from cognitive transformation in adolescence is self-esteem thinking. In this stage, hormone might have played importantly, however, tendency in comparing their personal attributes is highly expressed such as egocentrism and attention. Then, the combination of hypothetical thinking, egocentrism, attention leads to multidimensional thinking. They tend to see in different ways with themselves as the basis of ideal condition. Finally, adolescents tend to see things as relative, which can be manifested into questioning assertions and less likely to accept the concept of facts as the absolute truth.

Social transition state

Sexual desire, self-esteem, friendship, attention are combined to form social behaviour. This phenomenon is manifested by the tendency of adolescents to spend lot of time to their peers (-related ages), which could lead to physical and sexual relationships. Although the tendency of preferences in term of opposite sex can be begun in the early time of adolescence, significant changing happens after they have obtained the previous three states.

Based on these four states, adolescence is the important period for parents to monitor both of their physical and emotional developments rather than only focus on their physical appearances.

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