Cognitive development puberty and adolescence

In addition to these changes, you also experience cognitive development. The intellectual capacity of the little ones matures As time goes by, they learn what the world is like and little by little, they build an image of themselves. As we well know, the transition from childhood to adolescence is not easy and it is here that many of the most important changes that will mark the personality of the young person take place.

This period is increasingly complex due to the incessant demands made by society: more social skills, more physical and intellectual dexterity and a greater adaptation to the changes that must be faced individually. If throughout childhood, the education they have provided family and school has not been aimed at promoting these skills, the adolescent may have considerable adjustment problems.

The adolescent's personality

• His feelings are contradictory.
• It maintains dependency-independence conflicts.
• They need to belong to a group, but on the other hand they also demand isolation and solitude to find their own identity.
• Search for their sexual, moral and religious identity.
• Search for their autonomy and their own self.

His emotions

• Difficulty expressing feelings.
• They often have emotional ups and downs.
• Need for self-esteem, recognition and acceptance.
• Unsafety
• Easy for feelings of loneliness, shame and guilt to surface.
• They look for relationships.

Cognitive development

When the young person has completed their cognitive development, the following characteristics are presented:

• The adolescent is able to elaborate an abstract thought and maintain a critical and reflective attitude towards the world and the lived experiences. Symbolic thinking is not his strong suit and he uses, as in previous stages, intuition or magical thoughts as when he was a child.
• Has an overflowing imagination and tends to dreaminess. Your thoughts focus on everything you want and don't have.
• The memory capacity is linked to his emotions, he remembers and learns what interests and motivates him.
• Can understand highly abstract artistic, metaphysical, or philosophical concepts.
• Problem solving is more and more developed, use previous experience to find solutions. Although at the school level he uses this ability to perfection, at the emotional level he is not always capable of resolving his own conflicts.

Different phases of adolescence

Between 11 and 13 years old

Young people are even more of a child than a teenager, they are usually very confused and eager for new experiences. The first sexual impulses begin to reach his body and he is already approaching groups of friends with whom he feels identified, although at the moment these gangs are small and usually made up of people of the same sex. Its morality is based on inflexible and resounding concepts and principles.

When they reach 14 and 15 years

The young man is already immersed in the middle of adolescence with the crisis that this entails. His intimacy, your looks and sexuality are three of the aspects that concern him the most. He lives the dependency-independence conflict with great intensity, that is, he is egocentric but at the same time he also needs the group, in which he increasingly integrates, imitating the members and defending them, even reaching adopt group norms because it considers them more valuable than those of adults. In this age the first crushes happen and it is when the sexual identity of each one is found. Contrary to the previous phase, here the group is already made up of boys and girls. In the moral sphere, their opinions are becoming more flexible and their moral standards are increasingly lax, even clearly permissive with what interests them and that serves to justify their actions and satisfy their desires.

End of adolescence (between 16 and 17 years old)

The adult traits begin to emerge in his body and in his thoughts, he already acts with more confidence (apparent or real) and is capable of making important decisions. His personality is practically formed, what is going to be as an adult will be closely linked to what has lived in this stage. At the level of social relationships, he is more selective and at the same time more outgoing, he needs less from the group and can get involved in relationships, although these are generally unstable. At this time, he detaches himself from the opinions and moral rules of the group, forging and manifesting his own. It is in this last stage, one step from adulthood, where the adolescent is capable of assuming individual responsibility for their actions.

Why do adolescents suffer existential crises?

All young people must go through the crisis of adolescence with greater or lesser intensity, which is accompanied by a feeling of emptiness that they try to fill with affectionate relationships, friends, ideas, fun, social acceptance and religion. At this stage you have to be very attentive to the behaviors of adolescents, since they can fill that void with undesirable practices such as seeking fun together with compulsive consumerism, etc. The life crisis of the adolescent is part of their cognitive development and we could affirm that it is the first great life crisis of the person, is the crisis of the identity of the self. It is a very fragile stage at a mental level in which the adolescent lives a situation of great risk for psychological disorders (feelings of anguish, sadness, disappointment and self-doubt).

It is the work of those of the changes that their children undergo during puberty, since at the slightest indication of mental disorder it is very important to go to a good specialist. Besides having a wide medical staff, it includes a Telephone Psychological Guidance Service, through which a qualified team of psychologists will guide you in a personalized way.

Pediatric Specialist