Speaker 1: Did ian you two podcasting for Wine Just this is
a little break announcement between childhood and adolescents. I just
wanted to tell you we've started two new podcasts called
Dad Psychology and the other one is Parents Are Parenting Decoded.
You can find these on Spotify and Apple wherever else
you're listening. So again Dad Psychology and Parenting Decoded. We're
back to our podcast. So if adolescens, we're going to
be looking at puberty, the prefunnel cortex and how it matures.
It does mature slowly while the limbic system develops. Earliest
is the emotional system. This is what increases the risk
taking and emotional intensity. It's usually the Mila nation. It's
the last part that has to mature. Here. Adolescens developed
formal operational thinking, according to Pha, but are prone to
what they call egocentrism, imaginary audience, and personal fable. Puberty,
of course, triggers rapid physical growth and hormonal changes. Marsha's
identity status is explain identity for through commitment and exploration, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium,
and achievement. Social development includes peer conformity involving parent relationships
and romantic exploration. Risk behaviors, and then we'll look at
the clinical component of it at the very end. So
let's take a deep dive at some of these things
and see what we got. So physical development puberty again
timing and sequence, so girls breast development to pubic hair
growth spurt and then the monarchy, boys testicular enlargement, pubic
hair growth spurt, and then the voice change. Early puberty
is linked to various psychosocial outcomes. And girls that is
associated with an increased risk of depression, bodied dissatisfaction, early
sexual activity, and heightened peer pressure. And boys early maturation
may boose self confidence, but is also associated with greater
risk taking and an increased likelihood of substance abuse. So
what is an early puberty? Getting around age eight to thirteen?
For girls, puberty unfolds along a typical but does have
a variable sequence. So again eight to thirteen. Obviously eight,
nine ten are the younger stages, while boys it's between
nine to fourteen. The experience of puberty is also shaped
by things like culture, body image, peer comparison, and family support.
Brain development. Adolescent brains undergo massive synaptic pruning and myelination,
particularly in the pre funnel cortex, which supports planning, decision making,
and impulse control. The myelination is that white matter, and
this is the part that has to finally mature and
finally ends maturing around twenty five and this is like
that freeway of communication between the different brain structures. This
region lags behind though from the limbic system responsible for
emotion and reward, and this is why adolescents tend to
become so much more risk takers, impulsive, and the mismatch
also leads to heightened sensation seeking, stronger emotional reactivity, underdeveloped
risk appraisal, and vulnerability to pure influence. So we go
over to cognitive development. Formal operational stage begins around twelve,
so you can see right towards the latter end of
puberty for girls and almost for boys includes a hypothetical,
deductive reasoning, abstract thinking, and systematic problem solving stage. This
is where adolescence think about the future, moral dilemmas and
possibilities beyond the concrete. However, mastery is not universal. Some
adolescents apply formal reasoning only in domains of interest to
familiarity adolescent egocentrism elkind. Even with advanced reasoning adolescents show
ecocentric distortions and self awareness, so imaginary audience. Here's an example.
Belief that others are constantly watching and judging. Everyone saw
me mess up. I'm humiliated. This is what they used
to do with. The social psychology world calls a spotlight
effect personal favor belief fable personal fable, belief in one's
uniqueness and invincibility. No one understands me, nothing bad will
happen to me if I try this. These beliefs contribute
to emotional highs, risk taking, and interpersonal sensitivity. And if
you have adults that are still stuck in this kind
of mentality, that gives you an idea of the delayed
maturation for that adult. Marsha's identity stay status is so.
This is based on Eric's identity versus role confusion stage,
but Marsha identified four identity statuses along two dimensions, exploration
and commitment. Identity diffusion means there's no exploration, no commitment, apathetic,
unsure of values or direction. May appear disengaged or depressed
in therapy. This is actually one of the criterias for
borderline personality disorder that may not fit exactly to Marsha's definition,
but identity diffusion as a word, we usually see identity foreclosure.
Commitment without explorations often reflects parental values adopted uncritically may
become rigid experience identity crisis. Later, moratorium is active exploration
but no commitment, often seen in college years or adolescens.
They're trying to learn and explore. Could be high anxiety,
openness to therapy and insight. Finally is identy achievement exploration
followed by commitment associated with greater self esteem, goal clarity,
understand who they are better, and resilience. Adolescents begin constructing
their possible selves, who they might become, hope to become,
or fear becoming. These imagine future's dry behavior, and their
goal setting, and are shaped by all kinds of things culture, peers,
in media, social media influence, especially today social development. Peer
influence peaks during early to mid adolescens can be positive
encouraging achievement, or negative with substance use or delinquency. Social
status clicks and exclusion shape self concept and emotional security.
Teens would secure peer relationships report lower anxiety, better coping,
and higher academic engagement. Adolescent relationships adolescens seek atonomy while
maintaining emotional connection. Conflict increases in early adolescens, often over
daily routines, independence, and boundaries. Authoritative parents as best supports
individuation without disconnection. So the really key thing here is
adolescence to seek atonomy but maintain want to maintain emotional connection.
They really want to know that you're still there. It's
almost like the secure base that we talked about in
attachment theory. Family dynamics often reveal covert themes identity struggles,
loyalty conflicts will roll diffusion parentified adolescens. Romantic relationships emerge
in early to mid adolescence and initially focus on affiliation
and social status. That evolve toward intimacy and support can
be sources of validation. Emotional learning and distress, dating, violence, coersion,
and jealousy may emerge in high conflict or emotionally immature relationships.
Risk behaviors and protective factors. Some of the risk behaviors
with adolescence the common ones or substance use, unsafe sex,
reckless driving, delinquency, or self harm. These behaviors often serve
developmental functions, testing limits and serting identity escaping emotional pain,
belonging to a peer group, protective factors, no surprise, secure
attachment to parents or mentors, involvement in schools, sports or clubs,
future orientation and academic goals. Emotion regulation skills and coping
strategies should be there all the way through their life.
Protective environments don't eliminate risk, but they buffer its impact
and provide a platform for recovery and growth. Some of
the clinical things to think about therapeutic challenges resistance to authority,
distrust of adults, fear of being fixed or pathologized, loyalty conflicts,
protecting parents, mood variability. Successful therapy requires respect for their autonomy,
allow choice, clarifying confidentiality limits early and often balancing individual
therapy with family involvement, using creative modalities, narrative expressive arts,
normal fluctuations and identity, mood and motivation, developmentally at tuned
interventions like CBT, DBT, motivational interviewing, psycho education, and family
based approaches like structural family therapy for system level issues.
Adolescence isn't a problem to be solved, it's a process
to be supported. So that's it for now. We've covered
childhood adolescens. We're going to go into emerging in early
adulthood next time. Thanks for listening, everybody,