Week 7 Discussion 2

“Perspectives: The Adolescent World” Program Transcript

STEPHANIE SCOTT: I think there's a couple of things that are really, really challenging in working with adolescents. And in my clinical experience, probably the most difficult thing is gaining their trust so that you can have a functional and effective working relationship with them, because most of them don't come to counseling by choice. They usually are dragged there by one parent or the other, or both, and they do not want to be there, and they don't generally like adults. So the first most challenging consideration is being able to really, really connect with that teenager.

I think the second biggest challenge is being able to, once you have a good relationship established with that client, is being able to also work with the family system. Because I tell my clients from day one, my number one goals work myself out of a job, so I need to help you become functional in problem solving and develop good coping skills and be happy. But this is a minor, and so you also have to work with the parents on the same kinds of goals and help them understand how to better support their teenager, and that can probably honestly get trickier than working with the teenager alone.

Some of the ways that I'm able to overcome these challenges is just to be with the client, and I go into the session, and I just connect and I spend that time to get to know them. And I say this because they have told me this themselves, is that they do feel like I respect them, and I care about them, and I'm not another adult who's going to judge them. And that's really, really important to working with teenagers.

One of the most important things to remember about adolescents is that a key developmental task is this idea of identity development and what's Erickson called, fidelity. But what is important to understand about that is this sense of identity achievement. There's more development of identity that occurs in adolescence then probably as far as personality goes, probably any other time period.

And being successful through adolescence is an important foundation to being successful in young adulthood, because having a strong sense of self, having confidence, competence, it comes from early adolescence, transition from late childhood, those traits are so important as young people move into that phase of life, that young adulthood phase, where now they're figuring out, who do I want to be? What do I want to do? Who do I want to marry? Am I ready to make babies yet? You know, those kinds of decisions, and so to have this stage prepare them for that is just so important.

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