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,’ which feels like it will last forever!”

On both counts, there can be an increase in time conflicts with parents. Expressed in each is the growing desire for more control over what needs to happen when. Time is life-time, and increasingly young adolescents want to determine how their lives are personally spent. The outcome for parents is that they can feel rushed by youthful demands, while it can take more time for them to get what they requested.

In response to youthful impatience, parents often want to take sufficient time to thoughtfully consider risks that an urgent request may bring. “Before we decide if this can happen, we need to discuss possible difficulties.”

In response to youthful delay, parents often need to mount a more steadfast pursuit to gain the cooperation and consent they want. “To make sure what we asked for is accomplished, we will keep after you until it gets done.”

Come the onset of their child’s coming of age passage and the push for more individuality and independence, usually between the ages of 9 and 13, parents must deal with more time conflicts—more passive resistance (delay), and active resistance (disagreement) when wanting to get what they require and desire.

Thus, now, they need to be more consistent with their rules, more persistent with their requests, and more patient with the increased time it can take to get youthful compliance and cooperation.

Why more resistance? With the adolescent awakening, four growing drives for autonomy make control over personal time more important to the teenager.

Individual expression and independent action

Personal privacy and social separation from family

Worldly curiosity and experimenting with acting older

Social belonging and fitting in with one’s group of peers

In each case, time must be invested to pursue personal growth. So, consider some complexities of managing time.

What Changes During Adolescence?

Find a therapist to support kids and teens

Time is complicated because it can easily become an emotional issue. Telling phrases describe how this felt connection to time comes to be so. For example:

When we have plenty of time, we can feel relaxed.

When we wonder about the best time, we can feel curious.

When we look forward to a good time, we can feel enthusiastic.

When we don’t know what to do with our time, we can feel bored.

When we are rushed or short of available time, we can feel anxious.

When we miss a good time that is now over, we can feel sad.

When we fall behind some scheduled time, we can feel rushed.

When we feel the necessity of being on time, we can feel obligated.

When we feel the opportunity of time has passed us by, we can feel regret.

When we are told or tell ourselves to take our time, we can be careful.

When we can’t wait for a good time to arrive, we can feel impatient.

When we undergo a dangerous or threatening time, we can feel anxious.

When we are mistreated at the time or all the time, we can feel angry.

When we can’t get our needs met at the time, we can feel frustrated.

When we don’t want to waste time, we can concentrate and be productive.

When we have too much to do in too little time, we can feel stressed.

When we are having a good time, we can feel pleasure and enjoyment.

When we are going through a taxing time, we can feel fatigued.

When we are going through a downtime, we can feel discouraged.

When we wish we had acted differently at the time, we can feel regretful.

When we appreciate the time we have been given, we can feel grateful.

When we suspend our sense of time, in the limitless moment, we can feel free.

And then of course there is that time-threat: the deadline. Now, a scheduled line in time has been drawn after which some possibility is "dead"—a person feeling pressed or anxious on that account.

Frustration with time

Timing conflicts between parents and teenagers are more common during adolescence, as needs for immediacy and intolerance for delay can become more wearing on them both. Now or later? That is often the question. Enter delay. For parents and teenagers, tolerating and managing impatience can feel harder to do.

Parent: “I need this right away!” vs. Teenager: “I’ll do it in a minute!”

Teenager: “I need permission now!” vs. Parent: “We need time to think.”

It’s easier for each to feel frustrated by the other’s disagreement and delay—argument and putting off now until later, in each case having to wait for what one wants. From denial of desires and intolerance of delay, impatience grows. And from prolonged impatience, feelings of frustration, irritation, and anger can follow, hence the shared complaints: “Now cooperation takes longer than it should!” “Now it takes more talk to reach an agreement.” “Now it’s harder to get each other to understand.”

Compared to the simpler days of childhood, come adolescence, between parent and teenager, there will be more growing tensions over time.

© Psychology Today