Teenage Behaviour and Choice Making
Teenage behavour is a direct result of one's state of mind. Regardless of one's chronological age, the maturity level of a person is determined by his or her mental age. The model says that the difference between "mature" and "immature" can be distinguished by finding out whether a person is searching for "answers" or "reasons".
Take the case where a principal at high school X made it clear to his students that he will not tolerate anyone being intoxicated at the school dance.
At stage two, a discontent teenager at high school who feels suppressed by his or her authority is likely to seek support from a group of friends who share similar ideology. By finding support from each other, they may purposely conduct activities to upset school authority in order to "send a message". From such action, teenagers feel that they've found the answers to solve the problems with school authority. In this case, the mentality of a person seeking for answer would be: "The principal says not to get drunk at the school dance, that sucks, but we're going to do it anyways to show him we, the students, are the majority. Problem 'solved'".
A mature teenager who feels discontent is one who searches for reasons in this case. He or she looks for reasons that caused the problems in the first place instead of looking for answers to the problems. He thinks to himself: "The reason principal X bans alcohol is because it is illegal and if something terrible happens as a result of intoxication, he's going to get into deep trouble from his authorities. However, as long as I don't cause any problems things will be fine. Therefore, we can still have some alcohol but we must control our limit so we can have a good time without making fools of ourselves."
Although in both scenarios the teen does end up going to the dance intoxicated, the teen who searches reasons considered the perspective of his authority before making his choice. In this model, we conclude the second is the more mature student.
Searching for answer: Problem ===> Answer.
Searching for reasons: Reason ===> Problems, Reason ===> Solution
Geniuses/Child-prodigy
In the case of persons with incredible IQ, the Order of Search model places them under "Search for meanings", which in terms of state of mind, is no better than other kids their age. Suppose a child with deep knowledge of mathematics and physics (which is a typical evaluation of genius at young age), the child is nevertheless still seeking for meanings for all these knowledge they have acquired and trying to make sense of them through problem solving.
In the case a genius, who has achieved the highest level of "needs" in Maslow's model and feels rejected, we can conclude he is yet searching for answers to solve his feeling of rejection. We can make such conclusion because the child does not understand exactly what the problem is, nor does he know that by taking another's perspective is an answer to his problems.
An older kid (pre-teen) in such case is in better position if he has grasped enough meanings; then he is able to find the problem and find answers to them.
Meanings ===> Problems
However
Not all child-prodigy has that problem. Take the case of young musicians. If they are searching for truth at such a young age. In fine tuning the most minute detail of their work, it shows that they have in their mind clear meanings, answers, reasons for their music. At such a high level, their goal is to communicate the findings of their inner truth in their music. In such case, the child has reached the highest level of state of mind and also fulfilled all the levels in Maslow's model. Empirical evidence supports that such child does not have social problems
The young musician's thinking would fall like this:"So I'm writing a composition for a large audience to tell the tragic story of Ralph and Lisa (meaning), and I feel the best way to use contrasting pieces to draw parallels to the plot in the story (answer). Doing so portrays the emotions that the characters are going through (reason), but I'm struggling with finding the perfect ending because I feel the ending is especially important in this story (search for truth)"
In the next and final part, I'll talk about more abstract topics of Happiness, Life, and Love. Stay tuned...
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