Over the weeks we spent together, I was an honored attendant to important changes in her life. As she worked through the anger and frustration, she made some simple, but important discoveries. If I keep them happy they tend to keep me happy. I wish I could say that every adolescent I have worked with so effortlessly got better and easily had such epiphanies. Unfortunately, for every child like her, there is another who sits sullenly for 45 minutes daring me to make him say a word, or reports on how much better he is doing this six weeks, only to bring home four F's instead of three.
Adolescents can certainly behave in mysterious, disappointing, and maddening ways .
In spite of this, however, I believe I have come to like and enjoy adolescents more than I used to. Perhaps, at almost forty, I identify with the same concerns they have to some degree. I have given some tips below which I hope will help. Understanding the Adolescent Everyone who has had an introductory psychology class or who has read at all about human development has run into Jean Piaget. Piaget studied his own childrens' development in depth and identified what appear to be stages of cognitive development.