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Adolescence : A Transition Between Childhood And Adulthood

Satisfactory Essays

“In an ecotone, the landscape will contain elements of the two different systems. It 's like natural borderlands […] I live in an ecotone” (Sáenz 238). Adolescence is an ecotone: a transition between childhood and adulthood with aspects of both stages and its own unique challenges. In Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle “Ari” Mendoza and Dante Quintana are two teenage boys, in the thick of adolescence. Through their navigation of this developmental stage, these teens are discovering themselves, discovering their emotions, and discovering the world that they live in.
Adolescence is a confusing and complicated terrain. There are a lot of changes physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally. Laurence Steinberg, leading researcher on adolescent development, cites many of the changes that take place during adolescence and the reasons this developmental period is so critical for healthy growth. Adolescence is a period of brain plasticity, the creation, pruning and fine-tuning of brain cells (neurons) and the connections between neurons (synapses). This plasticity and the neurological changes taking place make adolescent brains more sensitive to circumstances and to stress and make memories and emotions more salient (Steinberg 22). Also during adolescence, the reward circuit in the brain, the limbic system, is developing at a much faster rate than the decision-making prefrontal cortex; therefore risk and reward seeking

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