Understanding tweenagers

Change can create insecurity

I was chatting to a friend who was explaining that within the year, he’d got married, moved home, changed jobs, switched to a different church and was considering buying a new car. Almost every part of his life was in flux, and he had been absorbing the various stresses pretty well. I must say that I admired his ability to cope. He was not suffering from bloodshot eyes or significant hair loss; just a slight twitch and some uncontrollable nervous laughter from time to time. Understandably.

To have to encounter so much change all at once, it was an uphill struggle and we all respect his decision to go for it and make the necessary adjustments.

However, the changes he is making are mostly one’s he’s decided to make — not ones which are forced or inflicted upon him despite protestation or preferences. And his busy, roller-coaster year is almost up: the next twelve months won’t be anything like as tempestuous or complicated.

Consider, on the other hand, a pubescent teenager. The changes which are happening are even more fundamental then a change of scenery or sleeping arrangements. Furthermore, they are mostly unwelcome, some are unpleasant, many are unpredictable and all are going to take several years to complete. As if that wasn’t enough, all his friends are going through the same emotional turmoil. Add to that the unfairness of the contemporaries developing more quickly, and the biggest disaster of all, the misunderstanding parent who hasn’t made sufficient adjustments to allow for the change from child to adult.

For the pubescent (horrible term, but technically correct) everything is changing, and it seems that this spell goes on and on forever.

There are the physical changes that testosterone and oestrogen provide, of which we are all very well aware. These changes can seem frightening and embarrassing for the young people experiencing them. So often biology lessons have been woefully inadequate (focussing almost exclusively on ‘making babies’). Parental ‘birds-and-bees’ conversations are usually non-existent, or so wrapped up in analogy and allusion that little of value is communicated.

'When I was a kid, I reckoned the stork brought babies. Obviously I’ve grown up now and understand about zygotes, nads, X-chromosomes, snogging and soul-mates. But I had a ‘chat’ with mum and it sounds like she thinks it’s all to do with seagulls and wasps. How on earth she ever got pregnant with me, I’ll never know!' (Laura, aged 14).

So what are the changes we should expect to encounter as we seek to help young people through this complicated, frightening, insecure-making season of life? Sadly, there is no simple answer to this poser. Even worse, the news is not good for those who develop more slowly than their contemporaries.

Extract from Children’s Ministry Guide to Working with 9-13s by Andy Back