Understanding adolescence: Respect is key, says author in talk here Understanding adolescence: Respect is key, says author in talk here (March 20, 2002)

By Barbara Wood

Special to the Almanac

When Laura Sessions Stepp wanted to understand what her son was going through in early adolescence, she did just what you might expect a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to do _ she researched the topic.

What the Washington Post writer found was that while much scholarly research exists on the topic of early adolescence, there are few books on the subject written for the general public. So she combed through the research and spent a year following the lives of 18 youths in three communities to personalize those more abstract findings and to see if what she witnessed matched the research findings.

The result was the book: "Our Last Best Shot, Guiding our Children Through Early Adolescence" (Riverhead Books, 2000). It follows the lives of 12 of those 18 children for a year and talks about what worked and didn't work in their lives.

Ms. Stepp spoke about her book and her experiences last month at a talk at the Portola Valley Town Center, sponsored by the Portola Valley PTA.

Early adolescents, from ages 10-15, grow and change as rapidly as they did from birth to age 3, Ms. Stepp said. "They are adopting patterns of thought and behavior that will accompany them in the years to come," she said.

Her research showed that young adolescents have three major significant needs that must be met for them to grow up healthy and strong, Ms. Stepp said.

The first is the need to have a strong identity. Children need to be able to answer "yes" to three questions, she said: Am I loved and loving? Am I normal? Am I competent (or really good at something)?

The second significant need is to have good friends, to be a member of a group and to be a valued member of that group.

Third is to have opportunities to learn concepts and skills that challenge their growing brain power.

Successful parents and teachers, Ms. Stepp says, consistently showed several similar characteristics. They showed respect to children, gave them responsibility, and kept relationships going even when kids pushed away.

"You can have all the love in the world for your kid, but if you don't show respect for them, even when they're being disrespectful, they're alienated," she said.

Having fathers involved in their lives can be very important to young adolescents, Ms. Stepp said, and is often lacking in their lives. "Only one in five teenagers report spending time with their fathers daily," her book says.

For fathers who can spend time with their daughters, "the payoff is considerable, for on average, girls who enjoy solid, loving relationships with their fathers not only have more confidence in themselves, but are higher achievers in school. They are more likely to go to college and to establish successful careers than girls who don't," Ms. Stepp says in her book.

One of the most significant things Ms. Stepp may have learned about young adolescents is that they are all different. As her book says: "When it comes to how they look, think and relate to others, there is virtually no such thing as normal development. While boys mature between the ages of 12 and 18, and girls between 8 and 18, every child's biological clock is different and maturation is a process of fits and starts. ...Within one class at any middle school or junior high, there can be as many as six to eight years of difference in physical and emotional maturity."

In parting, Ms. Stepp advised parents to think about what they do well as parents, and do more of it; to think about how they confuse their children and do less of it.