2/*  The adolescent formulates his first personal ideas and desires, opposing himself to adults. These must understand his reactions, but keep the rules firm.

by Ezio Aceti

AIn this article we will delve into the thinking of adolescents, their intellectual dimension that represents an inexhaustible source to fuel their behaviors, sometimes very idealistic, other times very transgressive and problematic. We have already spoken in previous articles of a scholar of intelligence, Jean Piaget (1896-1980), who had the great merit of supporting his studies with more than two thousand experiments and therefore formulated statements that, as far as intellectual development is concerned, are mostly confirmed by reality.

We have seen that, during the child's development, Piaget distinguishes various intellectual stages:

Sensorimotor intelligence

This is the stage that a two-year-old child reaches. His intelligence is linked to the sense organs and movement. For this reason, we give a small child toys with bright colors, with clear shapes, so that he can develop his intelligence thanks to the manipulation of objects. Today, in all nursery schools, psychomotor skills are carried out, a form of physical and educational gymnastics that connects thought to movement.

Pre-operational thinking

From three to six years old, the child feels a huge need to connect the objects that are present in the environment. It is the age of puzzle, of constructions. The child continually connects parts of the games and objects. This need is so strong that he often challenges adults, like at the supermarket, when he wants to get out of the cart to touch all the cans on the shelves. His need to touch things leads him to throw tantrums and make a scene just to get out of the cart; then we have two solutions: either leave the supermarket or buy the child crisps, croissants, chocolates... just to keep him happy!

Operational thinking

From seven to eleven years of age, thought acquires abstract and operational capacities. What is a mathematical problem, if not reality represented in symbols? The child will learn to connect these symbols and to operate abstractly, because thought has become reversible and can move between the concrete and the conceptual.

Deductive Hypothetical Thinking

It is typical of adolescence, which involves the ability to formulate ideas and hypotheses. Since these are the first autonomous mental images of the adolescent, they are experienced in an excessive and conflictual way. For him, reality is ideal, exalted and dramatic. At this age, that singer, that soccer player is "tough", is clever, is the strongest, the best there is, or is worthless, "sucks". There is no middle ground and everything is experienced intensely.

This way of reasoning has two consequences:

- positive: pleasant emotions are experienced in an energetic way and the first “crushes”, the first attractions, are perceived in all their intensity.

- negative: the experiences ne-
negative or small fears are often dramatized in an exasperating way. Unfortunately, one of the causes of death among adolescents is suicide, which is not always committed for serious and desperate reasons, but often for apparently trivial problems. If we take a thirty-year-old woman and a fourteen-year-old girl, both with a pimple in the middle of their foreheads, for the woman it has little importance, while for the girl it often represents a real problem.

Let us now ask ourselves what the educational attitude of parents should be, what behaviors they should implement to facilitate the harmonization of the way of thinking of adolescents.

We know that the adolescent's thinking is at the basis of his aggressiveness and the construction of his identity. Small changes are experienced as a source of anguish, while the need for autonomy is very strong and manifests itself in continuous discussions with parents, which often result in turbulent arguments. What should be done?

It is necessary to know how to build a correct and re-educational relationship
respectful of his son's personality. Martin Buber (1878-1965),
one of the greatest masters of pedagogy, indicates in a clear and simple way the attitude that parents must assume in their relationships with their children; they are required to:

– put yourself in someone else's shoes;

– communicate to the other what you feel inside yourself;

– prevent (if it is a child) or negotiate (if it is a teenager and an adult) and then let him go.

This “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes” does not mean letting your child do whatever he wants, but rather listening to him deeply and presenting him with the rules that we feel are useful for his responsible growth. It should also be kept in mind that the child often expresses the crisis he is experiencing in “scurrilous” language, without actually wanting to offend his parents; it is his need for autonomy that is expressed in this way.

It is important that parents welcome this aggressiveness by communicating their state of sadness, without blaming the teenager, but at the same time providing in a clear and calm way those norms and rules that they consider most suitable. It may seem absurd, but often the dynamic that is established is this: the boy tends to transgress the rules, but at the same time has an enormous need for them. Parents must then know how to tolerate transgression and at the same time always provide precise norms and indications.