TEEN & TWEEN DEVELOPMENTAL CHALLENGES
Preventing and Managing Challenges
Just as every life stage has unique opportunities, each stage also comes with its challenges. While some challenges like moodiness or impulsivity are part of healthy development for adolescents, some experiences can challenge healthy development. Learn how to prevent as well as help your teen build relationships and skills to handle life's challenges.
Relationships
Relationships are at the core of human life: a fundamental human experience that begins at birth. As we grow, we interact with friends, family, teachers, coaches and more. These people help us learn who we are and who we can become.
Strong developmental relationships are important for young people of every age, race and socioeconomic background. These close connections are especially important for young people growing up in challenging circumstances.
Young people thrive when they experience a strong web of developmental relationships in their families, classrooms, youth programs and faith communities. It is especially important for adolescent development and mental health to have adults they can talk to about their feelings.
Yet in Maryland, only 36.8% of high schoolers surveyed feel they have an adult they can talk to about their feelings, according to the Maryland Department of Health Youth Risk Survey/Youth Tobacco High School Survey (2021-2022).
Others have relationships that involve violence, bullying or other unhealthy aspects.
That’s why it’s important that grown-ups know how to help young people form healthy relationships and work through challenging ones.
Source: Search Institute
To thrive, adolescents need to be rooted in developmental relationships. Keep reading with this 5-step developmental relationship framework from the Search Institute.
And, listen to youth talk about the impact of developmental relationships in their lives.
Keep Learning
So, how do you build relationships with young people and keep them strong over the years? Listen to this Rooted in Relationships podcast episode which features experts in adolescent well-being.
Positive Mental Health
Positive mental health gives young people a sense of security and happiness, promotes positive relationships and enables young people to steadily develop life skills. When we surround adolescents with conditions and experiences that support their developmental needs, young people can thrive.
Build positive experiences by ensuring teens experience:
Real world scenarios
that help decision-making and emotional regulation skills.
Healthy risks
to test new ideas. You can encourage these through the exploration of challenging classes, extracurricular activities and other experiences.
Opportunities that help them develop meaning and purpose.
This may be a volunteer opportunity or other activity where they’re contributing to peers, families and communities.
Positive situations that help them earn respect and socialize
with peers, teens and adults. To do this, they can join community and school activities and sports to develop competency skills and respect for self and others.
Situations that define personal values,
goals and a positive sense of identity.
Adults who offer compassion
and support.
Managing stress and adversity
On the other hand, different types of stress or adversity can undermine adolescent mental health. As adolescents explore the world around them, they can develop fears about social problems like gun violence, climate change, global conflict or other weighty issues.
They may experience bullying or discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, disability, weight or other aspects of their emerging identity. Adolescents may experience problems related to family finances or housing or can feel pressure to do everything right and figure out their future.
Keep reading about some of the pressures teens face and the most common mental health conditions.
Supporting your teen(s)
Parents and caregivers are vital sources of support for teen and tween mental health. Keep learning how to help young people cope with distress and work through mental health challenges. Take action with these 5 ways to stand by your teen.
Racism affects adolescents
Because racism shows up in society in many forms, adolescents encounter it in different ways as they explore their world.
Teens and tweens may witness or experience people speaking or acting in prejudiced, biased ways against people of color, in ways that can be either obvious or subtle. As adolescents explore music, movies and other media content, they can be exposed to images and narratives filled with racial stereotypes, a form of cultural racism.
Racism also shows up in society when systems like education, employment, and policing work in ways that benefit white people but hamper, exclude or harm people of color. Because adolescents and their families interact with these systems, structural racism shapes the way young people develop their identities and find their way in the world.
For young people of color, these different forms of racism expose them to ongoing stressors. Ongoing stressors can undermine healthy development and create barriers to realizing the opportunities of adolescence. An overload of stress can cause real and long-lasting harm to children, adolescents, and families.
- It is important that we, as parents and caregivers, recognize that racism is one of the adverse influences in our teenage children’s environments.
- It’s important that adolescents can turn to a caring, trusted adult to discuss their thoughts and feelings about racism.
- We can work to counterbalance the negative experiences and effects of racism with positive experiences, active support, and access to the vital resources for health and well-being.
Just as we would look for ways to prevent other forms of adversity, we can look for ways to reduce the effects of systemic racism on children, youth and families by actively working toward more equitable social and economic conditions.
What can grown-ups do to help?
Search for and reduce unconscious biases in ourselves.
Read Eight tactics to identify and reduce your implicit biases by the American Academy of Family Practitioners.
If our children experience or witness a hateful racist event, we can be on the lookout
for signs and symptoms of racial trauma and respond with timely supports.
Model and encourage coping behaviors like using healthy distractions,
expressing your emotions in positive ways, practicing self-care and relaxation techniques, like exercise, mindfulness, and yoga.
Talk to your teens and tweens about race and identity
by reading, watching, listening to, exploring and talking together about racism. Try this video from Maryland Public Television’s Above the Noise segment: What does it mean to be Anti-Racist?
Develop a community support system
of friends, families, educators, faith leaders and service providers.
Learn more about institutional racism in our social and economic policies,
including hopeful examples of effective strategies across the country. Watch this TedTalk How Racism Makes Us Sick by Dr. David R. Williams, PhD, MPH, chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Read about
How Developmental Science Can Help Address Structural Anti-Black Racism During Adolescence from the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent.
We all play an important role in advancing equity!
Join EFC as we push policymakers to consider equity in all decisions that affect families.
Getting mental health support
If your teen is experiencing emotional or behavioral challenges or is showing signs of anxiety or depression, there are ways to get help.
- Search the EFC resource database for mental health services by age.
- Call 988 if your adolescent has thoughts of suicide or you have concerns about substance use.*
- Text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line.*
*Both resources are free and confidential.
Risk Taking
It’s not only normal for adolescents to take risks and try new things, it’s an essential part of learning during these years.
Just like toddlers drop toys repeatedly to learn that they always fall, adolescents take risks repeatedly to learn about uncertain outcomes. We have a natural drive to explore new things in adolescence so we can discover who we are, expand our skills and prepare to become an independent adult.
Risk-taking can be both negative and positive. Adolescents can learn and grow from exploring in ways where the outcome is unknown – from participating in a new activity to getting to know someone new.
Healthy exploration allows teens the chance to experience risk in a positive, supportive setting.
Sometimes, adolescents may explore in ways that put their health and well-being at risk. For example, early exploration with harmful substances like tobacco, alcohol, marijuana or other drugs can lead to immediate problems, like accidents or injuries, as well as longer-term health and behavioral problems.
Whether adolescents are exploring in healthy or dangerous ways, effective support from adults looks much the same.
Keep learning how you can support adolescents as they explore. Learn what you can do as a parent to help your child as they explore new ideas.
Tips and Tools
When adults provide age-appropriate support, young people can grow and learn from difficulties. But none of us need to make it up as we go along. There are proven, science-backed ways to approach challenges children face at different ages and stages.
Want to communicate better with your teen or tween? Check out the Center for Parent & Teen Communication.