16 years old

1. Think about your teen’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses and how they are reflected in his or her school grades and activities from 14-16 years of age. What careers or courses of study might be best suited to your teen’s abilities and interests?

Isabelle has strength in the area of fine arts; she is really good with drawing. Here grades overall are good, and her teachers seem to like her. She gets in trouble a little for passing notes. She also got detention for leaving school a couple times. I think a career choice or study for Isabelle would be in arts, maybe in teaching.

2. How important have your teen’s relationships with peers been to his/her social development, emotional well-being and school achievement from 14-16 years of age?

She has a lot of friends and still has some problems with friends, just the usual high school drama and she has a boyfriend. She has been spending a lot of time with her boyfriend lately. She has a fair amount of friends and has some arguments with them but it usually gets over with soon.


3. How has your teen adjusted at 14-16 years of age to typical adolescent issues such as risk-taking, drugs, alcohol, and sexual interests, and how have you responded to your teen?

She is the typical teen… she came home from a party and smelled like pot and told me she didn’t smoke but others were and that she wouldn’t smoke because she is a athlete, I took her word for it but I didn’t allow her to hang out with those kids any longer. Then she got a boyfriend and lately they have been getting very forward with their affection. I have talked to her about safe sex and discussed our families belief about sex before marriage and I also talked about getting birth control just in case something happened and they get caught up in the moment. She also got drunk one night at a party and called me to come get her…. I didn’t say anything that night but she did get grounded for a while and I told her the next day that I was glad that she called me to come get her and didn’t try to drive. She has done a few things that are usual for teens but hasn’t done anything too bad.