The Five Tasks of Adolescence
by E. Noel Preston, M.D.

     Dr. Joe Sanders, professor at the Medical College of Georgia and the current president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, likes to tell his medical students and house staff there are five things an adolescent must do before he or she can become an adult. They are:

     1. Establishing, mostly by trial and error, a set of principles and behaviors by which to live. A young adolescent adopts behaviors and beliefs of other people, keeping those that feel comfortable and discarding those that do not. Constantly changing, a young adolescent can be a charming young companion one moment and a loutish oaf the next. Patterns of speech, type of dress, behaviors such as being punctual or late, sociable or withdrawn, anything and everything is fair game for the adolescent to accept or reject. Eventually he or she chooses a lifestyle and keeps it.

     2. Developing a sexual identity and liking it. Movies and television show people having sex without assuming or accepting any responsibility for their actions. Advertising promotes early dating, aggressive behavior, and risk taking. Young people must make enormously important decisions with possibly devastating results depending on what their values are - what they truly believe is right or wrong - at increasingly younger ages. To be gay or straight, virginal or sexually active, these are only some of the choices adolescents must face.

     3. Committing to choose and learn an adult occupation and becoming financially independent. Adolescence did not exist before the Industrial Revolution: to protect English workers from losing their jobs to the massive influx of immigrants from the Commonwealth nations, Parliament passed child labor laws and teenagers became financially dependent on their parents instead of gainfully employed. Education has become a more important and more expensive pathway to financial independence. By mid-adolescence young people must decide between taking college-prep high school classes or learning a vocational skill and entering the job market (this is a good reason for restoring the military draft or having a compulsory government service program - to give young people more time and more opportunities to choose a career). Making people choose at age 15, 16, or 17 what they will be doing at age 35, 46, or 57 is just asking for trouble and a lot of mid-life unhappiness!

     4. Becoming emotionally independent of the parents without rejecting them. Although not the last of the five tasks, this is the most difficult of them all, and some poor unfortunates never succeed. The most common fear of childhood is the loss of one's parents, either by death or abandonment, but society requires our adolescents to bring about actively that which they have feared the most for as long as they can remember. Friends become increasingly important, and acceptance by the peer group (which displaces the parents as being just as demanding, unreasonable, and dictatorial as they were) becomes of major significance. Language, hairstyle, music, dress codes, and nearly everything else the peer group demands seem diametrically opposed to adult standards. Surprisingly, the flagrantly hostile and rebellious adolescent, although more noticeable, is actually less prevalent than the more comfortable and secure, less antagonistic young man or woman.
   But eventually, all adolescents must demonstrate the capability of functioning independently of their parents. Usually after a physical separation, such as going away to college or joining the military or getting a job and moving out, the adolescent becomes comfortable with his assumption of adult responsibilities. He enjoys his independence and no longer feels the need to alienate his or her parents. He no longer needs the approval of a peer group. He is as independent of the group as he is of his parents, and feels free to resume some more conventional lifestyles.

     5. Developing intimacy with another person. After achieving independence from both the parents and the peer group, the adolescent seeks strong, individual interpersonal relationships. When this happens, childhood is over. Adulthood no longer lies ahead, it is here. By now truly an adult, the young man or woman is able to form permanent relationships with others.

     And that is how people grow up. We can assist, but we cannot accompany our children on their way to adulthood. This is a journey we have to let them make on their own.

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E. Noel Preston, M.D. is a pediatrician in solo practice in Peachtree Corners. 6063 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 202-A, Norcross. (770) 448-1553.

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