The Mt Kenya Times 
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By: Wanjohi P. Mugambi
Worth Noting:
Firstly, a number of common childhood risk factors predispose adolescents to delinquent behavior:
- Parental psychiatric illness.
- Learning disabilities.
- History of serious head trauma.
- Severe behavioral problems (e.g., fire setting or cruelty to animals).
- School problems.
- Family dysfunction.
- Alcohol or drug abuse.
- Delinquent peers.
- Emotional distress.
- Criminal activity.
During the process of separating and developing increasing autonomy from parents, teenagers occasionally revert to earlier coping patterns and require increased nurturance and support. Even though they may appear aloof or unaffected by parental values, they are actually strongly influenced by the attitudes, values, and behaviors modeled by their adult caregivers. Hence, “it is extremely important for adults to open lines of communication and be mindful of the values and behaviors they are demonstrating to youth” (Hazen et al., 2008, p. 166).
Sometimes after long periods of rebellion and rejection, and after having romanticized relationships with surrogate parental figures (i.e., developing a “crush” on other adults), they become amenable to accepting the parental values and standards of conduct that they formerly rejected. Healthy parenting accepts individuated teenage identity formation and incrementally safer degrees of physical and psychosocial separation from parents.
Parents and other prestige or authority figures in a teenager’s life can influence the development of a healthy self-concept by positive role-modeling (i.e., setting a good example through having responsible and gratifying experiences in their own lives) and by nonjudgmental acceptance of their children. Parents should affirm the positive qualities that they identify in their teenager’s personality and overtly demonstrate admiration and praise for these qualities.
In most cases, the higher rates of conflict with parents during adolescence are not indicative of a serious rift in parent-teenager relationships. Even when emotions run very high, both parents and adolescents report that the overall quality of their relationships remains strong, with a foundation of shared values and a considerable amount of mutual affection, respect, and family commitment.
The conflicts are usually seen by both parties as relatively insignificant arguments about issues like dating curfews and personal appearance, while there is overall agreement about principal values such as honesty and the importance of a good education
A healthy and stable self-image is of primary importance in healthy adolescent development. Problems in the formation of a positive sense of self show significant correlations with disturbed peer and family relationships; depression and mood instability; and risky sexual or other acting-out behaviors, including substance abuse, crime, and poor school performance.
Overt manifestations of physical illness (e.g., deformity) or less visible symptoms (e.g., diabetes) can have a negative impact on an adolescent’s confidence and self-esteem. During the peak of reliance on group acceptance, illness may crystallize underlying fears of being unwanted, alienated, and flawed. During these threat points, individual counseling, peer support groups, and increased parental nurturance and support can impact healthy teenage development (
Decisions that emanate from these “hot cognitions” are strongly influenced by a fully developed limbic brain region. As a function of the incompletemyelinations in cortical regions, these decisions do not enjoy comparable inputs from the executive brain regions (i.e., prefrontal cortex).
It follows that efforts to help adolescents to make safer choices should eliminate some of the emotional energy (i.e., triggers for impulsive choices) that adolescents might feel when contemplating risky behavior.
Therefore, effective adolescent treatment is predicated upon anticipating some of the difficult situations and associated decisions that teenagers are likely to confront (e.g., smoking marijuana, drunk driving, gang provocation, criminal trespassing, vandalism, unsafe sex). Treatment exercises and role-playing are geared toward helping youth to imagine and proactively work through the process before it occurs, outside of the emotional exigency of the moment. As a rule of thumb, conversations
Our exploration of the physical, emotional, cognitive, and moral unfolding of adolescence and a discussion of the general progression of a deviant identity, have set the stage to present several theoretical models for how derailment from healthy adjustment can occur.
Firstly, a number of common childhood risk factors predispose adolescents to delinquent behavior:
- Parental psychiatric illness.
- Learning disabilities.
- History of serious head trauma.
- Severe behavioral problems (e.g., fire setting or cruelty to animals).
- School problems.
- Family dysfunction.
- Alcohol or drug abuse.
- Delinquent peers.
- Emotional distress.
- Criminal activity.
- In general, to the degree that these factors are unmitigated by success in one or more of the above (e.g., well-functioning family, academic achievement, positive peer associations), the risk of problem behavior increases exponentially (i.e., head trauma plus family dysfunction coupled with academic failure dramatically increases the risk for mental health, substance abuse, and conduct disorder).
- As a platform for developing evidence-based treatment for juvenile crime and substance abuse, we begin by presenting a number of prominent concepts and theories designed to explain the combined forces that propel youth into deviant activities. These provide a conceptual framework for understanding, interpreting, and predicting the development, dynamics, and outcome of adolescent problems. Each model contributes to a greater understanding of the necessary components to include in an effective treatment model.
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