Teen Development

I'm putting together a "handout" of sorts that is turning out to be more of a research paper. I decided to delve into the complicated study of understanding Adolescent physical and psychological development. When I get started looking for this information, aticles, poring over them- I can honestly say that learning about their development is helping me understand this strange portion of the patron population. It's also reminding me how awkward and confusing adolescence was for me.

The idea was to have this information set-to-go and hand out to other library staff by Fall. That only gives me a few more weeks really. I suppose I could wrap it up- but I'm learning so much and finding out new things all the time, so I'm curious to see how far I could take some of the information. Most of it is stuff I'd known, but not why. For example: Teens are sleep deprived. I've always known that. However, I didn't understand WHY. Now I know (after reading articles) that it's due to a lot of different reasons- particularly that adolescents require about 2 hours more sleep per night than adults- and they don't get it. One of the reasons researchers believe contribute to their lack of sleep is that teens may be more sensitive to light during adolesence, which messes up their circadian rhythms. So they're not tired when adults are, and they are tired when adults are awake. Hence: there's likely to be problems communicating with someone who's only half-awake when you're trying to talk to them.

I am a person who knows what it's like to be perpetually sleep deprived. Someone once told me that if you fall asleep within 5 minutes of hitting the pillow, that means you're sleep-deprived. I'm the type of person who falls asleep while horizontal. Every. Time. It's as if I recline and BAM- out like a light.

And with the days getting shorter this August, I can't help but how this effects teens going back to school. I'm exhausted in the mornings! There are people out their who have research to back up the claim that teens are so sleep deprived, that the school-day start-time should be later in the morning. They say that having a later start-time would decrease behavior problems, attention capacity and more for teens. I have to say that after reading the research, I tend to agree.

So we'll see how much further I take the teen development research. Maybe it will be something I end up submitting somewhere...but I am a bit nervous that what I'm putting together has already been done. So we'll see.