If you’ve spent any time with adolescents, you’re familiar with one of their more endearing traits: disproportionate development. They wake up one morning 4 inches taller, but it’s all in the legs, and their torsos are still the same size. Or maybe their arms and legs are the same length as they were last year, but their hands and feet have suddenly gotten huge. It’s adorable, and a little bit pathetic.
Some kids grow so fast and so unevenly, they end up careening around, bumping into things and bouncing off the walls. It looks like they’re being careless and intentionally disruptive, and maybe they are; but a big part of it is that they literally don’t know what size they are.
It’s not only their bodies that are growing quickly but disproportionately; it’s their minds and their hearts and their consciences. So you may find them careening around the house not just physically, but intellectually or morally or socially. Their thoughts and feelings and desires and sense of self are developing fast, and not at an even pace. They are disproportionate, and it’s adorable, and a little bit pathetic.
And sometimes infuriating. Disproportionate development leads to some truly insane inconsistencies in their opinions and behavior. They often come across as wildly hypocritical, requiring the highest standards for other people and (apparently) the lowest for themselves. They can be self-righteous, and they can be very harsh, as well as emotional and ludicrously sentimental, sometimes in the same breath.
The standard explanation for this behavior is that their hormones are fluctuating mercilessly, so they’re under assault from the inside; and at the same time, the world is bombarding them from the outside with nonstop information, nonstop stimulation and nonstop nonsense.
These are all solid explanations for why adolescents act the way they do. But I find it easier to look at them with kindness when I remember that their most irrational behavior is not as senseless as it looks. In fact, it is a sign they are growing. It’s just that the growth is disproportionate.
The best thing you can do, for your own sanity and for their current and future good, is to look for, name and praise the parts that are getting big and strong and well-developed, and to be patient while the rest of them (it is to be hoped) catches up.
Here’s an example. When the Space Shuttle Challenger was preparing to launch, our class got copious lessons about Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who’d been selected to join the crew through the NASA Teacher in Space Program. She taught high school not an hour down the road from us, and the whole school followed her exploits enthusiastically.
Of course she never made it. The whole class was all glued to the screen as the ship exploded. It was horrible in many different ways.
But in the aftermath, very shortly after, a bunch of us complained to our teacher, Mrs. Blanchard, that we were tired of hearing about boring old Christa McAuliffe all the time. … Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.
Image by Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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