How Do Adolescents Develop?

Adolescents are not the easiest to handle or satisfy, for that reason it is important to know how they grow and develop. As teachers and future librarians, we need to find those perfect books that will help our kids and young adults fall into reading and simply enjoy it.  There are many developmental theories that will help us know about them a lot more. Physical development is a tough one for adolescents. This is the time where they might be somewhat confused about puberty and essentially not happy with the way they look. Nowadays, there are a variety of books that talk about this, and assure kids they are normal and will survive this stage. Adolescence carries a great deal of intellectual change as well. Piaget’s theory states that children develop from a sensory motor stage to a more concrete operational stage and finally to a more formal stage. As we are choosing books for our kids, it is critical to know where are they in forms of their intellectual development. Abstract questions can be asked, but scaffolding must be provided. Kids also go through developmental stages when they are transitioning from children to adolescents. Peers change from elementary to middle school. Once they reach their adolescence, they start creating their own little groups that might share interests like music and clothes. It is also easier to see the difference between opposite sex. There are no problems to have boys or girls as just friends.  During adolescence, kids also start working for pay, but their relationships with parents start to change. This is the time where they see that they might not think the same or might just have different interests. Finding their actual vocation, morals, values, adapting to physical bodies, and defining appropriate sex roles also tend to happen during this stage. As librarians, we have to know the needs of each kid as an individual and find the accurate books for them. We want them to believe that they can be anything they want to be and there are no limits.

This chapter was extremely informative to me, especially since I have worked with young elementary students my entire career as a teacher. Yes, I do have nieces and nephews that I see go through a lot during adolescence and this chapter definitely cleared a lot of things up. I have learned that it is extremely important to get to know each child and identify what level they are on in order to meet their needs at its best. The different stages they go through explain what kind of book might be best for them to understand what they are going through better.