Family

• seeks parental advice and support for decision making
• enjoys and seeks freedom
• makes more independent judgments
• needs consistent negotiable guidelines
• needs to assert independence
• feels ties to home and family
• feels ambivalent toward moving away from parents toward independence

Peers

• is looking for a permanent relationship
• continues to make choices and decisions in response to peer influences
• uses group activities as outlets for feelings

School

• feels the responsibility for making career decisions

Emotions

• worries about the future
• operates with increasing empathy
• is anxious about forming intimate relationships
• may be in love
• may be able to become more open and vulnerable in relationships
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Values

• is integrating values into a personal philosophy
• continues to develop personal ethical standards and moral codes
• makes personal commitment to causes
• may adopt a rigid value system
• may express righteousness, a lack of ambiguity
• begins to express outlooks and make judgments tempered by fairness and moderation

Self

• moves toward firm decisions regarding post-secondary career or school choices
• seeks permanence in intimate relationships
• seeks assurances about economic security
• experiences doubts
• possesses a strengthening sense of personal identity
• may think he/she "knows it all"
• is open to information provided by trusted adults
• experiences an illusion of immortality
• begins the transition to independent living
• may define self in terms of career goals

Intellectual Development

• continues to refine language and thinking abilities
• continues to refine reasoning skills

Physical Development

• experiences slowing or completion of physical growth
• experiences increase in strength, endurance, coordination
• experiences completion of or continued skeletal growth

Developmental Tasks of Adolescence

• to establish independence
• to think, reason, and verbalize abstractly and conceptually
• to be comfortable with one's own body
• to control one's impulses, functions, and capacities
• to build new and meaningful relationships
• to seek economic and social stability
• to develop a workable value system