Adolescent Coping: Leisure Based Responses to Stress

Adolescent Coping: Leisure Based Responses to Stress

Until recently, psychological studies on stress and coping have focused on adults. Adolescents were not ignored, but they were held to the same developmental standards as adults. However, that is a major flaw in the research. Adolescents and adults are very different developmentally. Adults, for the most part, have learned how to deal with stress through experience. Adolescents, on the other had, are learning how to handle stressful situations. Adolescence is a critical period for a person to learn how to cope with stress because they are transitioning from being a dependent child to becoming an independent adult. Studies have shown that throughout adolescences, responses to stress change very drastically.

Younger adolescents are usually still very dependent on their parents. They rely on their parents for social and emotional support. When dealing with stress, a younger child is likely to reach out to a parent or a parent-like figure such as a teacher. In terms of leisure activities, the younger adolescent typically spends more time engaging in family activities when dealing with stress. The child may engage in leisure activities on his own or with friends, but it is usually just to distract him or her from the problem. At this age, the child is not too concerned with solving the problem causing the stress, but mostly with simply coping and being supported through the difficulty. They develop goals to accommodate or avoid the stress. Despite not actively solving the problem, it is in the early stages of adolescence when children begin to understand the causes of stress and recognize the effects of it.

As children enter their teenage years, they begin to create connections that define their identity and help them deal with stress. At this stage, teenagers tend to confide in their friends when dealing with stress. They no longer rely on their parents for social and emotional support, and some teenagers go as far as to pull away from their parents and become hostile. Pulling away