What Changes During Adolescence?

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Time becomes an emotional issue for teenagers in many powerful ways.

Adolescents often address time in two ways that frustrate parents: impatience and delay.

Parents must be both more patient and persistent in getting teenage cooperation.

Time matters to us because we depend upon it in several essential ways, over which parent and teenager can increasingly conflict.

To measure our life experience: how much there is, how long it lasts, how to keep up, scheduling what needs to happen when. About measured time, the adolescent can become more impatient and resistant: “I need this now!” “I’ll do that later!”

To evaluate our life experience: how it felt, how relaxed or hurried, easy or hard, pleasurable or painful. About evaluated time, the adolescent can become more critical and dissatisfied: “This is a bad time!” “Stop giving me a hard time!”

To communicate our life experience: how much to be known, how much to share, how much to conceal. About communicated time, the adolescent can become more private and secretive: “I don’t want to talk about it!” “It’s my business!”

As more diversity, distance, and disagreement grow between adolescent and parent, conflicts over time increase.

For parents, an adolescent's sense of time can be frustrating in two contrasting ways:

On the one hand, there is more youthful impatience. “Whenever she badly wants something, she has to have it ‘now’, treating it like an emergency!”

On the other hand, there is more youthful delay. “Whenever we request something, he puts us off until ‘later,’........

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