· Write in first person
· Make it personal
· Make examples
1***In human development, there are two stages each on its own extreme. These stages are childhood and adulthood. Childhood comes with almost no worries and less responsibilities that is mostly limited to house chores and school home works, but we won’t remain a child, we have to grow up. Adult stage comes with responsibilities and worries to be taken care of. However, there is no direct transition from childhood to adulthood. 2***There is an in-between. This is the teen age.
3***SHAPE YOUR TEEN WORLD
The teen age is the world between childhood comforts and adulthood responsibilities. 4***The most important stage of transition with regards to growth, between childhood and adulthood. 5***A mid-way between two extremely different worlds. This stage of life is a moderation between no or less worry and extreme responsibility, but it is an entirely new world.
6***YOUR TEEN WORLD
What could be more wonderful than the feeling of being accepted?
That feeling of belongingness
After all, a person can put up with a lot of things if he knows that the people who count with him approve the way he or she is handling his life.
On the other hand, perhaps the cruelest torture a person can experience is to have been rejected by those he or she want to be with. 7***It really hurts to be scorned by those you admire.
Somehow the lowest feeling you can have is the feeling that you are not in tune with everybody else. The sting of rejection by the group hurts far more deeply than a bawling out by a parent.
8***There is nothing wrong with the need to belong. We have to belong in our own world. It is natural. Its god’s way of leading us naturally into the world of adult sharing, giving and loving.
The problem is that some persons go too far in seeking the approval of others. They never act on their own. They are always guided by what others will think, or do or say.
Many go to excessive length to make sure they won’t be considered out of tune.
Some girls for instance will wear almost anything to get approval of the group; in our modern term we call them slay queens. Some boys will do or say anything to get applause or admiration from their own gang or a group they would want to be a part of or a girl they admire.
Just look at the way some boys and girls dress and act. They want attention and they seek it by how they dress, how they act and by what they say, rather than by who they are.
*Some girls are like mobile pornography, sexy is not a compliment, it simply means sex related, whatever it is provokes and promotes sex activity
Its important that we dress and act so that we get approval from others. But you can go too far. If your clothes rather than you are the attention-getters, then there is a problem. It’s the same with language and actions. If we do or say something to get approval, then its our language and actions that gets attention not ourselves as persons.
The need to belong is especially strong in the teen world.
9***Teenagers have a sphere of their own from which children are excluded and adults are not expected to enter, otherwise it would account as a carryover. Teens have a language, a dress code, habits and actions which belong to them. This is as it should be because they are no longer children, so they should not act as children. But neither are they adults. Because they often feel uncomfortable and insecure among adults, so they build for themselves a world where they can fill secure among those who like them, want and need to belong.
10***THE TEEN WORLD IS BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
Even though you are not a child any longer, you don’t feel like a full-fledged adult, either. Far from it! More than likely, you feel suspended somewhere in between two worlds: the world of childhood at home and the world of adulthood outside.
You want to break the apron strings a bit, but you aren’t ready yet to have your own family or hold down a full-time job. The step from childhood to adulthood is too big to take all at once. So in stepping out of one world, you want to be sure there is one you can step into. There is your teen world. 11***Here we find ourselves getting more interested in people of our own age, wanting to be with them more often, to do more things with them. They become your home away from home. We gradually try out new activities here which can help us towards adulthood at our own speed.
Here we are able to find independence and belongingness. The independence comes in choosing your interests. The belongingness comes with being with the people who have the same interests you do.
12***WHAT ARE YOUR TEEN YEARS FOR
For some the teen years offer the chance to grow and develop. They enable teenagers to learn, to acquire new skills, to add to the store of knowledge they already have. Teen age give us the chance to move towards the goal we have in mind and develop our interests. For others , teen age offer the chance to start anew, to make up for lost time, and catch up with opportunities that slipped by. For a few, unfortunately, they may become lost years, wasted years, years of frustration.
But for all, there are new opportunities, new challenges, and new directions. With those new opportunities and challenges, there are choices to be made. You have to decide how to relate to adults, you have to decide how hard you are going to work, you need to decide whom you will choose for your friends and how to start shaping your destiny, most importantly you have to decide what you will do with your growing freedom and your leisure time. All of these will determine what kind of teen world you will live in.
13***YOU CAN’T WALK DOWN EVERY PATH AND TRAVEL WITH EVERY CROWD.
You have to choose your priorities; what is more important to you. The friends you choose and the things you do are going to shape you into a certain kind of person. Look at your models and see what their success story is like.
14***ITS IMPORTANT TO REALIZE THAT ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION THE PATH YOU START WALKING NOW IS LEADING TO WHERE YOU WILL WIND UP.
Do you know what this means? You are helping God create you, by the choices you make. You and God are working together on you. Good provides the raw material, it is up to you to put them in shape. Here, you consciously choose the direction of your life.
15***THE TEEN YEARS AN OPPORTUNITY TO GROW
As we begin to decide the direction of our lives; who and what we will be, we see people with different talents, opportunities, drives and motivations. We are gifted in different ways, however some people seems to have lots of luck, some seem to make their own luck, and some work hard for what they want to achieve. Some have a hard time, while some seem to get by without too much effort. We should find out which group we belong to, so that we don’t make mistakes.
Some are healthy, a few have troubles with their health, and some have physical impairments which prevents their being able to do all they do like. And because of circumstances, some cannot make use of the talents they have or the opportunities afforded them.
16***In other words every person has his or her own talents, opportunities, ambitions and motivations. So the law of nature requiring you to be yourself, does not mean that you are allowed to be selfish, egotistic, self centered, domineering, or do whatever comes to your own mind. It means becoming what your talents, your capabilities, your opportunities, and your limitations enable you to be.
Your teen years are your opportunity for you to grow into the kind of person you were created to be. The question is, will you use that opportunity to become that kind of person or will you squander it and fail to be the person God created you to be?
But, to become the kind of person you were created to become, you have to reflect on who you are and why you are.
17***THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO REALLY LEARN ABOUT YOURSELF. ONE IS TO JUST SIT AND THINK AND THE OTHER IS TO GO OUT OF YOURSELF AND TRY TO FIND OUT WHY YOU FAIL AND WHY YOU SUCCEED AND WHAT YOU SHOULD DO TO BE A BETTER PERSON.
When we realize the persons we are meant to be, we will find it more interesting to live. Strange as it may seem, many people don’t reflect on their own reality. They just exist from day to day. So they are never becoming what their talents, opportunities and purposes in live could have helped them to become.
This doesn’t mean that most people don’t accomplish anything in life; rather it means that many people do not accomplish what they are capable of accomplishing. They work at half speed, using half their talents and letting their opportunities slip away. They accomplish only part of what they could because they do not reflect on who they are or why they are. Most of the time they just exist. They don’t really live!
18***WHO ARE YOU IN YOUR TEEN WORLD?
To really be ourselves, we need to know who we are and why we are. Only you can answer the question. At this point, we are young human beings who happen to be Christians.
19***THE TENAGE WORLD AND ITS CHALLENGES
The challenges of the teen world are like hurdles in a race. If you negotiate them successfully you reach your goal. If you don’t, you stumble and possibly ruin your chances to success. If we seek growth in our teen world, we need to face the challenges that it present.
SOME OF THE CHALLENGES ARE
· PEER PRESSURE
· FALSE POPULARITY
· REBELLION AGAINST SOCIETY’S LAW
· EXCESSIVE WITHDRAWAL
· IRRELIGION
· LACK OF SENSITIVITY
However these are called challenges because we face a choice of how we respond to them. Our desires can so cloud our vision that we may actually see the challenges as opportunities; we may see them as means to attain status, to be somebody in the eye of certain persons.
The pressure we face from our own group and the influence on our thinking of Tv, radio, movies, magazines, records and some adults, may sometimes cause us to make decisions based on values that are not worthy of us as persons. We need to see things for what they are, evaluate their influence on our lives, and determine how we will face them. How we respond in general determines how we shape our world.
20***PEER PRESSURE
This is the strong influence that a particular age group or social group exert on persons of that age group or social group to conform to its standard, codes and methods of behavior. Peer pressure is at once social, emotional and psychological. It demands conformity. Or you will not be regarded as a real nigga.
All age groups and social groups exert pressure to conform on those who belong to them. Middle aged groups have their ways of acting, young adults have their way of acting, and teens have their way of acting. All conform more or less to social demands.
Conformity is not a bad thing in itself. In the right sense, it leads to harmony and unity of purpose. It make people feel comfortable among themselves. But when conformity means doing what everybody else does if to the point of betraying one’s ideals or principle or conscience, then its bad. This kind of conformity is finding out what everybody wants (the ones we want to most be accepted by) thinks and likes, and then telling ourselves that we think and like it too, just to avoid being labeled as odd. We should bear in mind that right is right, even when nobody is right, and wrong is wrong even when everybody is wrong.
This kind of conformity has smothered many growing personalities. Persons who could have developed a talent or given a new idea to the world or helped someone, have become empty shells. They did not dare to stand out and take criticism for what they knew was right.
The worst form of conformity is giving in to the misuse of drugs, alcohol, or sex because everybody pushes them to you. Then we give excuses to justify our abuses and excesses, like, everyone is doing it, my boyfriend introduced me to it, I wanted to see what it feels like to be high, what’s wrong with it? Adults do it why can’t I?, it won’t hurt me, I can stop any time I want to (ok its like you have not heard of addiction) Etc. we will see ourselves making such excuses if we are not able to control the overpowering pressure of conformity. Excessive conformity is the fear of being different. But I challenge you, dare to be different, don’t violate your own self.
How can we be ourselves if we are always allowing other people make us into themselves? It will take us away from who we are meant to be.
BE YOUR OWN PERSON
Don’t be fooled by those who try to pressure you into these, or other, anti social or anti-personal actions. Be your own person. How? By being bold enough to say NO when we need to say NO.
21***FALSE POPULARITY
Another major challenge facing young teens is seeking popularity.
Like conformity, there is nothing wrong with being popular. The difficulty and problem lies in seeking to be popular at any cost. This is seeking false popularity. Some of us can do anything to gain praise and notice.
This particular challenge leads us to confusing friendship with popularity. Some teens try to buy friends with a constant display of easy money and what it can buy. It may take a long time before the empty feelings dawns on them that their friends are more interested in what they have than in what they are personally.
More pitiful are those who don’t have money or privileges to buy friends. Rather than develop and share their true self with solid friends, they spoil their own lives by moping over what they don’t have rather than develop what they are. This is the case with us guys,
For the case of girls, many of you succumb to judging your personal worth by your sex appeal (attractiveness to the opposite sex). So they try to impress boys more in the body they have than in the person they are only to be deeply hurt later when they find out that the boys were actually just using them.
Young girls who let boys use their bodies are not only risking pregnancy and disease. They are also setting themselves up for the psychological and emotional shock that will follow when they discover that they are popular only because their bodies are available. Pepper them gang, take note.
22***REBELLION AGAINST SOCIETY’S LAWS
A third major challenge that teenagers face as they grow into maturity is observing the laws they don’t like or think are not fair, or they think are not for them. Laws are necessary for the good of the society. This is the challenge of observing the rules and laws that we think interfere with our fun.
Don’t allow anyone deceive you with words like, who is going to know? or we won’t get caught or what’s the matter with it, or the popular ‘you too dey fear’. Some people do the things they know is wrong just for the hell of it. This may be fun for a while. It gives a sense of freedom, power or the impression of not being under anybody’s thumb, but it leads to trouble.
What we don’t realize with this challenge is that the society creates laws to protect people’s rights, not to interfere with their basic freedom. In breaking some rules we may think to ourselves that nobody gets hurt so what’s the big deal.
Senseless rebelling against society is directly opposed to the basic law of nature which requires us to build society if we are to be what we were created to be.
23***EXCESSIVE WITHDRAWAL
This fourth challenge affects very few teens, but it can affect anyone. This particular challenge makes for a very miserable life. We all need to be alone at times, we are all unique and its natural that we have some interests that other persons don’t share. Also a certain amount of aloneness is good for us because it helps us to discover our real self. On top of that, some people are naturally quieter than others, and some like to be alone from time to time just to enjoy their own thought and do their own things.
There are others who withdraw excessively from social contact and pretend that they don’t really care. They exaggerate their uniqueness and pretend that they are against conformity, but in reality they are afraid of the normal struggle to adjust to others. They expect everyone to come to them, to accept them immediately, and to make them the center of attention. If this doesn’t happen they are deeply hurt. Meanwhile, if they continue to withdraw, they become loners. They go on their own way and pretend not to care because they cannot stand not having their own way or being accepted on their own terms.
This type of persons can get into serious trouble with themselves, by excessive withdrawal, by freezing out everybody, by being hard to get along with, by refusing to cooperate or even be civil, by not even responding to the most generous offers of friendship, the loner retreats more and more into himself and becomes his own worst enemy. Instead of being his best self, his social self in which he shares and have fun with others, he craws into a shell and dos not let himself develop into what he can be.
He may resort to drugs or alcohol to relieve his loneliness.
24***IRRELIGION
This fifth challenge poses a question of what to do with our religious life. There comes a time in almost all our lives when we ask, is there a God? Each answers this question in his own way. Some just kind of ignore God, treating him as a nice thought, but not really of much consequence. Some retain their childhood ideas of God and regard religion as a Sunday thing. Some give up the search entirely and act as if God didn’t really exist.
Some teen are afraid to show any interest in developing a healthy religious life because they are afraid others will make fun of them. So that they don’t call them sister mary, or holy nweje or santa nwege. This particular challenge make the teens not to flex their religious muscles. Such irreligious teens drift away from a basic truth of life. There is a God whether we belive in him or not. God is always at home, its we who have gone astray.
LACK OF SENSITIVITY
Young people can be terribly cruel towards others less fortunate than themselves. Many people suffer for years because of the way they were treated as young teens.
The five challenges I have discussed deals with pressures affecting people to a greater or less degree depending on the circumstances of their lives. However lack of sensitivity to other people’s feelings and need is exhibited by the small sins of being uncharitable to others in seemingly small ways. Little acts of uncharitable character can have terrible serious consequences, yet most people don’t give them a second thought.
People have been socially crippled because they were made fun of. Those people who were objects of laughter or were excluded from some things over which they have no control like their size, their appearance, their voice, their mental ability, their lack of coordination, their colour or religion.
Reputations have been destroyed by lies, half truths, innuendoes, hints, suggestions, or even truths that a person has no right to tell. People as socially excluded because of their poverty, on daily basis we make people the butt of cruel jokes, we taunt people because of their differences,. These are all acts of uncharity.
But actually, making fun of someone else is a form of cowardice. Because you hide in the crowd and points out someone else to be laughed at. We often feel we achieve a sense of power by making another person feel inferior. This goes directly against the golden rule. Do unto others what you will like them to do to you. For example, some people would come and slap you in the name of joke and the day you will do the same to them they will roar like a tiger.
Its not enough that we avoid deliberate acts of uncharity. We need to be on the lookout for occasions to be a real friend. Let go out of our ways and make people feel at home.
Look around there are lot of people who need what you have to offer. Some are obviously shy, while others cover up their insecurity by obvious bragging
CONCLUSION
Somewhere in the challenges facing us as young people are the keys to your becoming the person we are created to be. Think about them and resolve how we will handle each as it comes along.
