How Adolescence Shapes Us – Dr Lucy Foulkes
When I picked up this book it was for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted an understanding of how adolescence forms us and shapes our identity to add to my professional knowledge and expertise as a counsellor. Secondly, I have four niblings (nieces and nephews) who are all fully in the teen years and I find myself absolutely bewildered by their worlds. What I didn’t realise I would get from this book is a greater understanding of my adolescence. At times, it was like teenage versions of myself were sitting next to me and I suddenly saw them (myself!) in ways I had not seen them before.
I can’t recommend this book enough and for many reasons. Simply written and easy to understand with personal stories from Dr Lucy Foulkes’ research, it resonated in a way that a self-help book just doesn’t. It’s worth pointing out – this isn’t a book about parenting. However, I’d recommend that parents everywhere who may be approaching the wilderness of adolescence in their lives read it. Because the power of remembering our adolescent selves, our joys and lows, our power struggles and identity building, our stubbornness and rebellions, brings with space to be compassionate to ourselves and to our children.
Adolescence can be hard to understand from the perspective of our adult selves and yet it forms us in fundamental ways we don’t always realise. It also, as is pointed out from the first page, stays with us in our memories in ways that other experiences in our lives don’t. This is for many reasons: it is a time of novelty – an epic line of firsts; it is a time of biology – a turbulent journey of hormones, instincts and drives; a time of social navigation and a time of independence both psychologically and physically. It shapes us into a human that will go into the world and build their own lives.
What comes off so beautifully is the amount of respect that hums from the page for a group that Dr Foulke’s describes as ‘derided and stereotyped’. She demonstrates how, as adults, we often underestimate adolescence as a time of selfishness and reckless stupidity and, by association, dismiss and misunderstand that part of ourselves. The book is organised around a series of familiar topics: popularity, love, sex and relationships, bullying, risk-taking and image and identity. These are fascinating subjects in themselves but, through research and first-hand experiences of teenagers, a picture is shaped of a time that is fraught with fun, excitement and exploration as much as danger, risk and heartbreak.
Time and again the book gently asks us to take adolescence seriously, revealing it is a more complex era of our lives than we give it credit for. Popular or unpopular at school? Understand that this was determined by forces that were out of your control including your attractiveness, gender conformity, ability to follow invisible social rules and associations. Haunted by memories of risk-taking or stupid, dangerous decisions? Feel compassion for the teenager who believed they were invincible, driven by a desire for feeling good and fitting in with friends. Still haunted by your first love, first heartbreak, first sexual experience? Take these things seriously – they were powerful, shaping experiences and they mattered.
What the book leaves you with is a greater understanding of your story and the narrative of your identity and who you are today. It may be a story that was mostly filled with friendship, love and adventure or a story shaped by loss, sadness and isolation but, if we can accept that it is also a story of imperfection, randomness and luck, we may be able to find a greater sense of acceptance and understanding.
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