The Challenges of Middle and Late

Adolescence
Learning Competencies:
You should be able to:
1. Discuss that facing the challenges during adolescence may able to
clarify and manage the demands of teen years.
2. Express your feelings on the expectations of the significant people
around you (parents, siblings, friends, teachers, community leaders).
3. Make affirmations that help you become more lovable and capable
as an adolescent.
The Challenges of Middle and Late Adolescence
• Growing up is never easy.
• You are faced with a lot of challenges.
• These challenges are rooted in the various changes that happen in
adolescents.
• What comes into your mind when you hear the word “challenges?”
• To begin our lesson let us try to define what are challenges for you?
• How do you look at challenges?
The Challenges of Middle and Late Adolescence

• Do you look at challenges as synonymous to problems, threats, trials,

and tests or something negative?
• Or do you consider challenges as opportunities, chances, or spring
boards to success – something positive?
• In this lesson, you shall try to understand the challenges that confront
now or will possibly confront you in the near future.
• Together with your classmates, expect to exchange ideas and explore
possibilities for facing these challenges in ways that are constructive
and beneficial to your personal growth.
THE PASSAGE TO ADULTHOOD:
CHALLENGES OF LATE ADOLESCENCE
• Physical Development
 Most girls have completed the physical changes related to puberty
by age 15.
Boys are still maturing and gaining strength, muscle mass, and
height and are completing the development of sexual traits.
• Emotional Development
May stress over school and test scores.
Is self-involved (may have high expectations and low self-concept).
Seeks privacy and time alone.
THE PASSAGE TO ADULTHOOD:
CHALLENGES OF LATE ADOLESCENCE
Is concerned about physical and sexual attractiveness.
May complain that parents prevent him or her from doing things
independently.
Is concerned about physical and sexual attractiveness.
May complain that parents prevent him or her from doing things
independently.
Starts to want both physical and emotional intimacy in relationships.
The experience of intimate partnerships.
THE PASSAGE TO ADULTHOOD:
CHALLENGES OF LATE ADOLESCENCE
• Social Development
Shifts in relationship with parents from dependency and
subordination to one that reflects the adolescent’s increasing
maturity and responsibilities in the family and the community,
Is more and more aware of social behaviors of friends.
Seeks friends that share the same beliefs, values, and interests.
Friends become more important.
Starts to have more intellectual interests.
THE PASSAGE TO ADULTHOOD:
CHALLENGES OF LATE ADOLESCENCE
Explores romantic and sexual behaviors with others.
May be influenced by peers to try risky behaviors (alcohol, tobacco,
sex).
• Mental Development
Becomes better able to set goals and think in terms of the future.
Has a better understanding of complex problems and issues.
Starts to develop moral ideals and to select role models.
Activity 1: Role Play on Challenges of Middle
and Late Adolescence
Divide yourselves into small groups
Identify and share 3 most challenging things that you have
experienced in the last 12 months in which a developmental
challenge of middle adolescence is seen in your everyday living.
In 10 minutes, practice your role play with your group mates.
Perform your role play in class. (2 minutes each group)
Each group will share and discuss to the class your presentation
focuses on the developmental challenges of adolescents.
THE PASSAGE TO ADULTHOOD:
CHALLENGES OF LATE ADOLESCENCE
As this lesson ultimately aims to cope with challenges and improve
one’s relationship with your significant others, it is perhaps best to
end this lecture by providing some Strategies to cope with challenges.
 Strategies to Cope with Challenges:
1. Learn to accept what you feel.
When you feel sad, angry, or envious, you need to embrace these
feelings because they are real emotions.
They are only reflective of who you are – a human being.
Accepting your feelings means allowing yourself to feel and express
them.
Accepting your feelings means allowing yourself to feel and express
them.
This means that you acknowledge what you feel.
 Strategies to Cope with Challenges:

This also helps in understanding the feelings, which is oftentimes

rooted in childhood experiences and triggered by similar situations
that may or may not be connected to each other.
You can choose ways not only how to express your feelings, but on
how you acknowledge them as well.
Trying to understand your feelings will give you a venue to study
your experience and express feelings in a more socially accepted
manner.
Strategies to Cope with Challenges:
2. Identify your vulnerabilities.
Knowing when you feel intense emotions is important to
acknowledge.
Ex. You know that you get irritated when your mother speaks to you
as if you were a young child. You have told her about your feeling
when she does this, but she still would not listen. Acknowledging
that you feel negatively about her manner of talking to you would
help you think of ways to handle it.
Strategies to Cope with Challenges:

Also, it is beneficial when you know the warning signs or red flags of
your emotions because they tell you when to walk away or let go
before you do or say things that you will just regret later on.
Ex. You have noticed that before you flare up in anger, you first feel
your face getting hot, your knees trembling, and your heart
pounding very fast. The next time you feel anger and you see
these signs, you excuse yourself from the discussion and walk
away.
 Strategies to Cope with Challenges:
3. Develop your talents and interests.
Attaining positive self-esteem helps boost your psychological well-
being.
You can do this when you exert efforts to develop your talents and
interests.
Doing so needs patience and perseverance, because mastering
skills and honing talents do not happen overnight.
Further, confidence is not simply gained by just believing you have
it; rather, you see yourself growing with confidence when you have
enhanced your competencies, seen the things that you can do, and
figured out how far you can go.
 Strategies to Cope with Challenges:
Know your interests or things that you enjoy doing.
Engaging in sports may divert your attention from the challenges of
life and will prevent you from feeding your negative thoughts.
Negative thoughts when nourished become monstrously
unhealthy.
4. Become more involved with others.
Happy people do not just live for themselves and do not think of
themselves alone.
They attain happiness through helping others and sharing what
they have with others.
 Strategies to Cope with Challenges:
They express fulfillment when they have shared with and helped
others.
Involvement with others allows you to appreciate what you have
and gives you lesser time to think of what you do not have.
 Strategies to Cope with Challenges:

5. Seek help when needed.

 Asking for help is as beneficial as helping others.
 Many adolescents are shy and hesitant to ask for help because
they feel that they only add weight to the problems of others
when they do.
 Also, they think that they would look silly when they ask for help.
 However, you should know that a teenager still has to learn a lot
of ways of being effective and psychologically healthy.
Strategies to Cope with Challenges:

 As adolescence is a transition from childhood to adulthood, you

are still not used to solve problems alone. Thus, asking for help or
assistance is a measure to prevent things from being complicated
or getting worse.
 You may ask help from any trusted adult such as a parent, a
teacher, and a guidance counselor.
Activity 2: “Dear Significant Others”
• This activity aims to facilitate communication between you and your
significant others about the challenges that you are facing as
adolescents and your feelings towards the expectations of your
significant others.
• On a sheet of paper, make a letter addressed to your
parents/guardians or other significant people around you (siblings,
friends, teachers, and community leaders).
• In the letter, courteously express how you feel about the stage you
are going through (adolescence) and what you think and feel about
your significant others expectations of you.
 Activity 2: “Dear Significant Others”
• Send or give it to the significant person/s to which it is addressed.
• Ask your significant others make a short reply letter and submit.
 The Significant Others

• Significant other, or significant others, is synonymous with the term

“relevant other.”
• In social psychology, the term denotes a person that guides and takes
care of the child during primary socialization – a parent, uncle or aunt,
grand parent or teacher. He or she protects, rewards, and punishes
the child as a way of aiding the child’s development.
• In psychology, a significant other is any individual who has
pronounced importance in a person’s life or well-being.
• In sociology, a significant other is any person with strong influence on
individual’s self concept.
 The Significant Others

• Nowadays, the term “significant others” is used to refer to all people

who are of sufficient importance in a person’s life to affect his or her
emotions, behavior, and sense of self. Parents, siblings, relatives,
teachers, community leaders, Friends.
 Dealing with Significant Others
1. Genuinely respect other people.
If you want others to treat you with respect, you need to truly
respect them first. Respect, like love, is felt. Respect begets respect.
2. Never lose faith.
Have faith in the creator and the humanity He created. Indeed,
some people had chosen to become evil, contrary to what God
wants. But humanity is “like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean
are dirty, the ocean does not become (necessarily) dirty.”
3. Remember that the other is a mystery.
Never think that you already really know someone completely. Do
not make assumptions. Don’t presuppose either that somebody
totally knows you – your thoughts, opinions, and conditions.
 Dealing with Significant Others
4. Share your blessings.
Finding ways to give back is satisfying. When a person becomes
happy because of our selfless acts, we feel a sense of fulfilment.
Sharing your blessings is never meaningless.
5. Rebuild your self-esteem through friendship.
True and loving friendship can and does rebuild one’s self-esteem.
6. Eat with somebody you enjoy being with.
Amiable conversations with people dear to you can make mealtime
pleasant.
 Dealing with Significant Others
7. Nurture your friendship with good people.
Collect friends. But, at the end of the day, you have to keep the
good ones and avoid the bad influences. Friendship should gain it,
keep it and maintain it, for it is priceless.
8. Earn others’ respect.
Respect is not really that easy to earn. You should gain , keep it,
and maintain it, for it’s priceless.
9. Listen to someone who is speaking.
If you patiently listen, the one speaking will recognize your
appreciation, respect, concern and attention. Respect begets
respect.
 Dealing with Significant Others
10. Say “Please” and “Thank You.”
Treating other persons with respect is very important because
everyone of us wants to be respected also. Showing respect to others
can be done in simple ways like by saying, “Please” and “Thank you”.
11. Don’t talk about somebody behind his/her back.
If you are a back fighter who wants to downgrade others, then you
don’t deserve to be respected.
12. Don’t contain your anger all the time.
If somebody does or says something that makes you angry, then tell
him/her in a nice way. Holding back unhealthy emotions will only
cause them to return and haunt you later in life.
 Dealing with Significant Others

13. Don’t judge someone for his/her belief.

Don’t think ill of anyone just because he or she has a different
religion or political belief from your own. Also, don’t judge a person
based on his or her social status and family background.
14. Be true to your words and promises.
Be honest and reliable. A respectable person is one who is honest
in his words. He can be trusted to do what he promises.
 Dealing with Significant Others
15. Properly deal with those who have offended you.
 If you hold anger against anyone, consider talking to him/her about it.
You might be surprised to learned that this person has no idea that
he/she has offended you.
16. Be yourself all the time.
 In dealing with other people, don’t pretend to be someone else. As
we’ve been mentioning, “It is better to be hated for what you are than
to be loved for what you are not.”
17. Avoid excessive anger.
 Anger is one of the natural human emotions. But excessive anger could
be harmful to your well-being and to those around you. Get away from
anger and reduce the amount of anger you feel on a day-to-day basis.
 Dealing with Significant Others
18. Be at peace with other people.
If you become angry in a room or office, try to go out and get some
fresh air or have a walk. Drink cool (not icy) water to get rid of your
anger. Avoid taking sweet or fatty foods which increase blood
pressure. Engage an exercise that provide calmness.
19. Refuse to be irritated by anyone.
Refuse to be annoyed, specially by those who matter to you. When
you feel that you are almost becoming angry, take a pause. Take
ten, slow deep breaths. Think of something funny. Try to imagine
the best scene in your favorite comedy movie.
 Dealing with Significant Others
20. Surround yourself with optimistic people
 Be friendly, but hangout with friends who are positive thinkers and
have a good sense of humor.
21. Don’t increase the amount of hate in the world.
 Look at the positive side of every event and development. Always
see beauty in the world where you and your significant others
belong. Count your blessings.
22. Treat people equally.
The ability to treat people equally is a sign of a mature and wise
mind. Albert Einstein related, “I speak to everyone in the same way,
whether he is a garbage man or the president of the university.”
 Dealing with Significant Others
23. Don’t make changing others your profession.
 Especially if someone doesn’t care about you, do not consider it your
obligation to change him/her. But you may pray for him/her.
24. Be practically selfless.
 Yes, living your life for other people can be good, but this entails that you
have already lived your life for yourself first and foremost. In fact, there are
times when you have to do what’s good for you, even if it means hurting
even those people you care for.
25. Make other people your source of inspiration.
 By mere by looking at or thinking of other people, you can be spiritually
strong. When problem seem to plague your life, others could make you
realize that they have gone through the same problems thata you have
today.
 Dealing with Significant Others
26. Be righteously friendly.
Being cautious in friendship, like being wise to choosing those you
befriend, is one measure of being righteous. None less than the
Bible state. “A righteous man is cautious in friendship but the way
of the wicked leads them astray.”
27. Never hurt anyone just to feel good.
Remember that calling someone fat won’t make you any slimmer.
Judging others’ outfit as “country” (“baduy”) won’t make you
getup more fashionable.
 Dealing with Significant Others
28. Never backstab anyone.
What is worse than betraying someone after pretending to be
his/her friend? “Friendship is a big deal, Backstabbing is even
bigger.”
29. Don’t worry much about what others think.
Social conformity is only good as long as it doesn’t hurt you nor
destroy your moral sense. Be originally happy for what you are,
especially if what you do brings honor to your Creator.
 Dealing with Significant Others
30. Be special by loving others with all your heart.
 You maybe a regular man with common life but if you have loved
another with all your heart and mind, that could be enough to be
really special at least to him/her. No memorial may be put up for
you when you’re gone, but you will always have a monument
dedicated to you in his/her heart.
Activity 3: “I am Loving and Capable”
• Write on the board an affirmation (1 per student) that would help you
realize that affirmations are beneficial in becoming determined to
reach goals such as to become more lovable and capable adolescents.
Example of affirmations:
I am well-liked and pleasing person.
I am competent in everything I decide to do.
I acknowledge and accept unconditionally my individuality and
unique personality.
I am not perfect but I am lovable.
I love myself despite my weaknesses.
 Essay
(Write your answers in a 1 whole size of paper)
1. Why is it important to know and meet the challenges and demands of
adolescence?
2. What challenges and demand of adolescence do you consider as quite
hard for you to face? Why?
3. At present, whom do you consider as the most significant person in your
life and why?
4. What is the relevance of being able to express one’s feelings regarding
the expectations of significant others?
5. How do affirmations help in creating a more lovable and capable
adolescents?
6. Are affirmations related to positive thinking? Why or why not?