Page 42 - Meeting with Children Book

P a ge | 40

THE ART OF MEETING WITH

ADOLESCENTS

Why We Need to Speak the Language of
Youth?
If children have unique ways of communicating, what
about adolescents? Adolescents look and act
remarkably like adults. Early adolescence begins at
age 12 and this developmental marker begins an
increase in the ability of an adolescent to think
abstractly and hypothetically. These changes increase
the cognitive process of systematic testing of opinions
and use of deductive reasoning. It is the beginning of
the ability to think about the future and to think about
the self in relation to the future. Egocentrisim is a
primary focus of youth which creates a heightened
self-focus that in turn increases self-consciousness.
The formal operations stage of cognitive development