"Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves." - Virginia Satir
Adolescences is a phase when a young child starts to enter adulthood. Many things change during this phase. Our bodies grow, our mind matures throughout the period, and our behaviours start to alter. As that happens, we get to know about pain, loneliness, stress and many negative feelings. This can be caused by overloaded work, and as peer pressure comes into existence. These conflicts within the teenager can cause him or her to commit suicide. When teenagers have still so much life left, they end it because of the miserableness they are in. To stop these teenagers from making wrong decisions, adults should help out, by solving conflicts of being bullied, decreasing the work expectations for teenagers, and by helping control their emotions.
Bullying is a major conflict in school. Bullying can dramatically change a teenager's life. As a teenager gets bullied, depression comes upon the teen, and that causes low self-esteem, health problems, poor grades, and suicidal thoughts. However, the level of depression depends on how serious or violent the bully is. In Korea, many students commit suicide due to the violence of bullies. In one article, one student was forced to play video/computer games for the bullies and made their game characters level up, earn power, and earn money in the game. If the student wasn't able to level up those game characters for the bullies, the student was to be assaulted. Playing games for the bullies made him fall in school, and if he (the student) weren't able to play the game for the bully, then he would get kicked, punched and more. If he were to tell his parents or call the police, then he would get assaulted again. Unable to bear this pain on his own, this student committed suicide. These types of violent bullying is becoming a serious issue in schools. However, the help of adults is much better than having the student to bear the pain on his own. Teachers, parents or any adults should take notice if a student who used to be in good condition is failing in school. Instead of criticizing them for their failures in school, an adult should ask "Is anything happening in school?". This would at least make the student a little bit comfortable. With an adult's help, bullying issues can decrease. With that, a teenager wouldn't make wrong decisions like committing suicide. Thus, with an adult, a teenager won't fall from where he or she was walking on his/her road.
Another issue is the expectations of a parent or a teacher. Overloaded work can surely stress a student out. If the student wasn't able to finish the work, then the student shouldn't be criticized for not being able to do it. Being criticized hurts the pride of the student, and that causes depression. In one article, a mother who had divorced, had been making her son study hard as ever and kept yelling him to be the top student ever in the world. If the student failed at something at school, the mother hit him with a golf club's grip over and over again. She never let him be in peace with studying. With hate, the student killed his own mother because of the stress. The student hid the corpse in a room, and sealed the door for 10 months. The corpse was found by the student's dad, as he came to visit his son and his wife. Stress of expectations can tire the student out and eventually lead the student into depression of not wanting to go home. Also, a student can never become the top student in the world. All people have different abilities, different skills, and different ways of learning so the best student of the world can't exist. Rather than forcing the child to be the best of everything, its best to leave the student do what he wants and follow that path to success. Too much work and high expectations causes depression to the student. Hence, adults shouldn't force the students to do more than they are supposed to do. Without those big amount of work, a student can still reach high achievements in life.
Last, controlling emotions is one of the hardest things for teenagers. As adolescence comes, quick changes in emotions can happen. This makes the student keep changing his/her mood whenever he or she feels like it. This can cause some students to cut off bonds with their friends. However, some students are able to control it well. For example, if a student feels somehow sad because of adolescence, the student can simply ignore that feeling or cut off that feeling and that keeps that positive throughout the day. Not many ignore sadness that well. For example, I have become a lot of sensitive throughout the year, making me come to negative conclusions, such as when I talk to my friends and they don't talk to me for a while, it comes to my mind "Oh.. Maybe I'm boring, maybe I'm not good to be her friend." This troubled me for a while, so to forget about these things, I tried to ignore it. One strategy was to keep on thinking the word "blank" and nothing else. It worked. It made me allow my mind to forget that negativity, and go to positive thoughts. Doing this activity made me realize something else. "Even though I may be boring, she doesn't hate me." When I realized it, it made me feel much better than before. This is an example of controlling emotions. Leading away from that, another problem in school during adolescence, is relationships between a girl and a boy. Emotions can be hurt from there if one likes the other, but the other doesn't. If having troubles with emotions, the student should go and talk to the councilor who is an adult to help him/her out. An adult can solve these issues better, as they have also experienced them. Sometimes, a student won't want to say these troubled thinkings because they are shy or they just don't want to tell anyone. Parents should help from here. If their child seems troubled, parents should make them comfortable; "Hey, want to go out and shop?". This allows the child to open up to their parents and eventually makes them feel better. Therefore, adults can help students control their emotions better and eventually that eliminates depression.
In a nutshell, the phase of adolescence can be hard, but adults can support it to help the teenager walk their road without any falls or trips. Adolescence is when many things change, and it becomes hard for the teenager to accept all these changes. Adults are there to help these adolescents to not make wrong decisions during that phase. If more care given to the adolescents, the more happiness they will achieve once they're older. So, look around. Even you can support adolescents anytime. As a friend, you can stand up for them against bullies, and help them forget their depression by talking or simply playing with them. As a parent, you can guide your child's life into right decisions by simply talking to them. That causes suicidal thoughts to disappear. Why give so much care to adolescents? Because, a teenager has so much left to do in his or her life, and because it's worth fighting for.
