Why it’s Important to Differentiate Between Typical Teenage Behaviors

Growing up is a difficult time for anyone. Starting from pre-school all the way up through high school graduation, many kids find themselves on the receiving end of abuse from bullies.

For far too long, many parents and adults have written off fighting and arguments in schools simply to typical teenage behavior. However, it is now understood that these actions can lead to serious teenage depression and anxiety.

In extreme cases, which also occur far too often, these adolescents can be driven to suicidal thoughts. In fact, depression has been found to increase a teenager?s risk of attempting suicide nearly 12 fold.

Only in recent years has this issue gained a lot of attention, but attempts to stop it have so far turned out to be futile. Part of this may be that many of these attempts have been aimed at reducing physical violence between kids. While this is terribly important to their safety, it is not an all around solution to bullying.

For example, even though school violence as a whole has been declining, bullying behaviors in general have increase by 5% overall. What was not expected, was how much online interactions are involved in bullying.

Social media has left many teens open to public ridicule by their peers. And again, because constantly being on social media is seen as typical teenage behavior nowadays, most parents just right it off.

While all children should be considered at risk of bullying, certain demographics in particular are susceptible to bullying. Children who are obese, homosexual, or who suffer from disabilities are up to 63% more likely to be bullied than other children.

The only way to protect each and every child from these situations, is to keep an open dialogue between them and parents. Children are often afraid to bring up these issues, and some even think they will get into trouble themselves by doing so.

It?s understandable that identifying typical teenage behaviors from abnormal teenage behaviors can be very difficult. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that children are comfortable enough to share these feelings and experiences with their parents, guardians, or other trusted adults. More. References.