Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.
Interpretation
Adolescents are simply navigating their growth and understanding in a world filled with uncertainty.
This quote highlights the transitional phase of adolescence, emphasizing that young individuals are not inherently difficult or problematic, but rather are in a state of learning and adaptation to adulthood. It suggests that adults, too, often struggle to navigate their own complexities, thereby fostering empathy and understanding towards teenagers as they face their own challenges.
In practice
In a discussion on teenage behavior, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of understanding their perspective.
Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely is like. She is a person who understand, values and develops her body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.
The message sent is not always the message received.
What lingers from the parent's individual past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes part of her or his irrational parenting.
The recommended daily requirement for hugs is: four per day for survival, eight per day for maintenance, and twelve per day for growth.
Your responses to the events of life are more important than the events themselves.
Put together all the existing families and you have society. It is as simple as that. Whatever kind of training took place in the individual family will be reflected in the kind of society that these families create.
Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work.
Three women were brought to the Singapore General Hospital, each in the same condition and needing a blood transfusion. The first, a Southeast Asian was given the transfusion but died a few hours later. The second, a South Asian was also given a transfusion but died a few days later. The third, an East Asian, was given a transfusion and survived. That is the X factor in development.
Some people there are who, being grown; forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.
I lived in a world where social arrangements were taken for granted and assumed to be timeless. A child's obligation was to learn these usages, not to question them. The complexities of racial deportment were of a piece with learning manners and etiquette more generally.
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from learning to be wise. There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,- Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
Learning to see the structures within which we operate begins a process of freeing ourselves from previously unseen forces and ultimately mastering the ability to work with them and change them.
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