Unit 9 assignmentFelicity YoungPS220: Child and Adolescent PsychologyProf:  Tanya SemcesenOctober 7th 2013Children between the ages of 13 – 18 go through many physical, social and cognitive developmental changes. At this age there are many demands that are placed on them which can be very challenging. There are body changes, new emotions, as well as academic changes. Both boys and girls will be in the experiencing puberty and they will go through a lot of physical body changes including; enlargement of testicles and penis, pubic hair as well as facial and underarm hair, acne, and nocturnal emissions for boys. For the girls going through puberty they will experience, growth of breasts, pubic hair, underarm hair, and menstrual periods. Socially adolescents spend a lot of time just trying to fit in and find their place in school and other social activities. This is the time when they learn more about the people they want to grow up to become and who they want to associate with. This is an incredibly critical time in a child’s life as they face a lot of peer pressure from other teens and society about sex, drugs, alcohol, and becoming delinquent. Sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy are social problems that many teens go through or have friends in these situations. Adolescents start to think about the long term, set goals, build their self-esteem, and become concerned with politics. “During adolescence, the developing teenager acquires the ability to think systematically about all logical relationships within a problem. The transition from concrete thinking to formal logical operations occurs over time. Each adolescent progresses at varying rates in developing his/her ability to think in more complex ways. Each adolescent develops his/her own view of the world” (Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, 2013).
“To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation…