I found this in my web surfing today. I felt good after reading it, hope you will, too.
Teenage Development
© International Network for Children and Families
We need to better understand adolescent developmental stages to help us not take teenage behavior as a personal attack on us. By becoming familiar with these stages, we will increase our competence in encouraging teens to establish their sense of identity.
- Teens are preparing to separate or individuate from the family. They are in the process of developing their values.
- Teenagers must initiate this separation and often rebellion gives them the energy to do this. A teenager challenges rules and values as a way of establishing his or her individuality. Adolescents cannot do this in a vacuum, but rather through conflict and confrontation.
- Adolescents may be rude or make fun of parents and other authority figures and not want to be with them. In a teenager’s mind, defiance expresses autonomy and says that he or she doesn’t need parents in and often serves as a test of parental caring.
- Due to body changes, there can be confusion about whether teenagers really do want to grow up.
- Hormonal changes cause mood swings marked by tearfulness, heightened sensitivity, sudden flare-ups, an increased need for physical activity and inappropriate laughter and giggling.
- Teens begin to work out their relationships with their peers to find out how they fit in.
- Teens start relating to the opposite sex in a different way than they did when they were younger (where there were once friendships, romantic relationships and/or deeply felt negative emotions may surface).
- Teenagers have a heightened need for privacy. Experiencing privacy gives them a new sense of control and autonomy. They need privacy to test things out for themselves without parent input.
- Teenagers may feel all-powerful and all-knowing at the same time that they experience fears of inadequacy and failure.
- Teens still need an adult to relate to, but in a different way than they did when they were younger.
© International Network for Children and Families (INCAF)
teenparentcafe 
Posted by just moi on March 20, 2011 at 12:08 am
This is some great information, Honey 🙂 I hope that you have alot of members registered with your blog. You offer so much great information, interesting writing and issues that so many parents face with their teenagers.
Is there some way you can bring more public awareness of your site? I think you can really help so many people out with your blogs and your links to helpful sites.
❤
Posted by Christina on April 5, 2011 at 11:47 am
Maybe I’m still a teenager! Some of these things definitely apply…. so… I’m the teenager and my kids are the adults. Good. Now, they can pay the bills 🙂 Glad we got that straight. Oh, wait…. I think that at least half of these things apply to pre and menopausal women, too. Oh well, it was good to be teen for those few moments.
Hormonal changes cause mood swings marked by tearfulness, heightened sensitivity, sudden flare-ups, an increased need for physical activity and inappropriate laughter and giggling.
have a heightened need for privacy. Experiencing privacy gives them a new sense of control and autonomy. They need privacy to test things out for themselves
may feel all-powerful and all-knowing at the same time that they experience fears of inadequacy and failure.
Yep… definitely apply right here, right now ❤