Early Adolescence: What It Is And What Changes Occur In It
Human beings go through different stages throughout their lives. Broadly speaking, these stages are three: childhood, adolescence and adult life. However, each of them includes substages or brief sections in which different changes occur in our development, both physical, psychological and social.
At the beginning of adolescence, important physical changes occur, especially between the ages of 10 and 14, changes that are known as the “growth spurt.” This growth spurt and other processes that occur at these ages make up what is called early adolescence
Below we will discover what the main changes and characteristics of this first stage of adolescence are, in addition to understanding its importance on an emotional level for the young adolescent.
Adolescence is the transition period between childhood and adulthood and during it one of the most important changes in a person’s life occurs: sexual maturity is reached, the prelude to adulthood and reproductive capacity
This maturity begins with puberty, a set of physical changes that bring with it the development of secondary sexual characteristics, some of them not directly related to the development of the sexual organs, such as the change of voice in the male sex. or the widening of the hips in the female.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), adolescence is a stage that could be placed more or less between the ages of 10 and 19, although it should be said that each person begins, experiences and ends it at different times.
As with childhood and adulthood, adolescence passes gradually, with changes that appear at different ages depending on the person since each person matures at their own pace. That is, there are individual differences in how and when we human beings develop.
Within adolescence there are three stages that indicate the ages at which certain changes are most likely to occur and that these occur at a faster rate: early adolescence, middle adolescence and late adolescence.
The physical changes that occur in the first stage are so important that they influence the psychological, social and emotional, causing the person to form expectations about how they are maturing, which also generates anxiety and doubts, emotions that also arise in their relatives who are second-hand witnesses of the entry into adolescence.
Changes in this period
As we mentioned, the first stage of adolescence brings with it several changes on a physical level, changes which They represent a moment of certain crisis for the child, who stops being a preadolescent and enters, although gradually, puberty
His way of seeing the world changes radically and leaves behind the innocence of childhood. Below we will see the main physical, social, psychological, cognitive and sexual changes that occur during this period, although not before talking about what ages it takes place.
Early adolescence is considered to be a subperiod of adolescence that runs from age 10 to age 14 although as with any other stage, there are people who start it and finish it sooner or later.
In fact, there are cases of boys and girls who could be said to have begun to show the first changes typical of adolescence at just 8 years old; and adolescents who are already in middle adolescence at 12 or 13 years old. Others may start later, but it is strange that it takes until age 13 to begin early adolescence.
Physical and neurophysiological changes
The most characteristic physical change of early adolescence is the famous “pubertal growth spurt,” something that many mothers and fathers identify as the sign that their sons and daughters have entered this turbulent period.
We call a “growth spurt” the fact that the bones begin to grow very quickly and unevenly, causing some joint pain in addition to giving a somewhat clumsy appearance and problems in the coordination of movements, something that, although annoying, is not serious or a reason. of concern.
In this phase secondary sexual characteristics appear The body begins to manufacture sex hormones which induce physical changes that occur progressively. Among these changes we have breast development and the appearance of menstruation in girls, which usually appears at the age of 12, while in boys the size of the testicles increases and the penis grows. Normally, girls begin to show these physical changes about 2 years earlier than boys.
Body hair appears, especially in the armpits and in the genital area, in addition to increased sweating and consequently a change in body odor. The skin becomes oilier which causes many teenagers to develop acne, especially on the face and back.
But in addition to external physical changes, there are also internal ones, less evident but equally profound. Early adolescence is a time when the brain experiences a great change at an electrical and physiological level. The number of brain cells can double in less than a year and neural networks are completely reorganized, something that influences both the physical, cognitive and emotional levels.
The frontal lobe, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for executive functions such as reasoning and decision making, begins to develop in early adolescence. Since, on average, boys begin this stage later than girls and their brain also matures later, it is typical for male adolescents to behave in a more impulsive and uncritical way with their way of acting compared to girls.
Social changes
Social changes do not have a great development during early adolescence if they are compared to those of middle and late adolescence, although it is worth saying that some do occur. These changes are rather consequences or derived from physical changes and how these are perceived by both the individual and the people around them, both of their own age and adults.
By observing how his body develops and changes, the teenager feels curiosity and also a strange feeling towards him. These transformations bring him closer to his group of friends, who are probably also experiencing the same changes that serve to show off or claim that they are already in adolescence, fostering group identification. Boys and girls stop seeing themselves as children and, although they know they are not adults, they are approaching adulthood
Thanks to the fact that they identify with their reference group of adolescents and seek psychological and emotional support from them, boys and girls begin to give greater importance to their friends than to their parents, who take a backseat and even begin to to question his authority. At 11 or 12 years old is when you start not obeying your parents’ orders or breaking some rules. They ignore what they are told and look for ways to be more independent from their family, in addition to valuing intimacy.
Cognitive and psychological changes
Associated with physical changes, especially the development of sexual organs and secondary sexual characteristics, Adolescents can experience important psychological and emotional changes The reason for this is that these physical changes are external, very obvious and noticeable, and depending on what expectations they have, how they perceive these changes, how their peers perceive them and how advanced they are for their age, the adolescent can experience them. with a lot of anxiety, confusion and fear or with a lot of enthusiasm and swagger.
It is also normal for young people to focus their thoughts on themselves at this stage, what we could well call egocentrism. As a result of this and combined with how physical changes are experienced, many preteens and teenagers often feel self-conscious about their appearance, thinking that everyone is judging them because everyone notices them.
As we have mentioned, the frontal lobe begins to mature during this stage, which has some cognitive consequences. However, the majority of adolescents in this period continue to think concretely, without having developed the abstraction of thought. They do not perceive the future implications of their actions and are still very far from thinking like an adult. In fact, younger people have very dichotomous thinking without nuances (e.g., good or bad, black or white, terrible or fantastic…).
Sexual changes: sexual orientation and gender identity
In principle, it is strange that in early adolescence sexuality is a very important aspect of girls and boys. In fact, contacts with the other sex if one is heterosexual have a rather exploratory nature, very far from adult sexual desire. It is quite likely that the individual will assume that he is heterosexual because it is statistically most likely, without feeling sexual attraction of any kind. It will be a little later when he suspects whether he is heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or asexual.
But even though sexual orientation is not very well formed, there is beginning to be a greater awareness of the gender to which one belongs compared to when they were boys and girls.
Boys and girls adjust their behavior and appearance to the sociocultural norms associated with the gender with which they identify or have grown up, and it is typical of these ages for children to try to appear more “masculine” by doing more sports, especially of contact, and girls try to appear more “feminine”, giving importance to aspects such as facial image.
It should also be said that what is considered “masculine” and “feminine” in terms of gender depends a lot on society and, of course, over the decades the typical behavior of adolescent boys and girls varies greatly. While girls are likely to place importance on beauty and boys on sport, this is nothing more than a gross generalization.
As we mentioned Body changes generate curiosity and anxiety, and can lead the individual to form a gender identity, which may or may not be more in tune with the physical changes you observe. Some individuals begin to question their gender identity at this stage, experiencing a very difficult time especially if they are a transgender boy or girl, being potential victims of harassment and psychological discomfort associated with feeling confused about their gender.
Reflection on early adolescence
Given the physical changes that occur in early adolescence, synonymous with the definitive end of childhood, the individual may suffer emotionally when seeing the great bodily changes they are experiencing.
Whether you are a boy or a girl, puberty, the growth spurt and some changes at a social level can be experienced with curiosity and anxiety in equal parts This stage is also the beginning of a period of great stress for transgender people, discomfort that will not get better in the next two stages of adolescence.
Taking all this into account, it is necessary to be aware that adolescence, unlike what many considered, is not a social construct, but a physiological reality that implies great consequences on an emotional, psychological and social level.
For this reason, people who work with pre-adolescent children between 9-14 years old must pay special attention to the changes that these boys and girls are going through, so that it is a period that is lived with the minimum possible discomfort, a discomfort which could ruin their development if it is handled very poorly and condition the rest of adolescence.
