Title: Storming into Adulthood | Psychology Today
Headings: Storming into Adulthood
Romeo Vitelli Ph.D.
Storming into Adulthood
Are adolescents really emotional volcanoes waiting to explode?

Content: Individual differences in adolescent emotional behaviour changes are domain specific and vary in intensity— Every emotionally challenging event an adolescent faces is going to involve some form of coping strategy, no matter how effective or ineffective. Peer rejection is one example of an event which can either be treated as a learning experience or else can have long-term damage. For each emotionally challenging event, there is going to be a way of responding but there are also going to be large individual differences in how adolescents respond. For that reason, predicting what an adolescent will do when faced with a new challenge can be extremely difficult. There are individual differences in the age of onset and duration of periods of adolescent change— Adolescents can vary widely in how rapidly their bodies mature. While 90-95 percent of all adolescent girls have their first menses between the age of eleven to fifteen, there are always outliers. Among individual adolescents in the same age group, body development can vary by as much as five years. Boys and girls who mature earlier can face greater pressures to engage in more adult-oriented activities such as sexuality, whether from their age peers or from adults. This difference in biological maturity does not necessarily match emotional maturity. All of which could lead to greater interpersonal conflict, mood disruption, and an increased tendency to take risks as adolescents grow older.