Adolescent可用作名词或形容词。 Adolescent用作名词，解an adolescent boy or girl，少男或少女；用作形容词，adolescent解(of a young person) in the process of developing from a child into an adult，由孩子发展成为成人的过程、青春期的。
Adolescence是名词，解the period following the onset of puberty during which a young person develops from a child into an adult，青春期、青少年时期。有英国专栏作家写道，孩子进入青春期，作为父母的可能会有这样的感觉：
Maybe you quietly mourned that sweet little boy or girl who played and chatted happily when family life was fun. Until the hormones kicked in and your baby morphed(渐变) into a teenage monster.
Mourn解哀悼，除了是人，为逝去的事物伤感也可以用mourn这个动词。例如mourn a relationship that didn’t work out(为没结果的一段关系感到伤痛)，而父母就可能会为孩子由小可爱变成小魔怪而感到哀伤。
但家长和师长都知道，孩子变为adolescents，可以是个很富挑战的时期。有时真会觉得他们的行为有点像monster(魔怪)。但青少年的魔怪行为与成年人有关：”Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.”(青少年并不是魔怪。他们只是在学习怎样在成人世界中自处，但很多成人连自己也不知道怎样自处。)
为处理家中青少年问题而觉得头痛的父母，可看以下的分享：
Our youth now love luxury(生活奢侈). They have bad manners, contempt(藐视) for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict(驳斥) their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food(狼吞虎咽) and tyrannize(专横地对待、欺压、虐待) their teachers.
这段话是对这一代adolescents十分贴切的描述，不过说这话的是古希腊哲学家苏格拉底，原来adolescent的问题不是今天才有，几千年前的adolescents也是一模一样，没有分别！
被了解或误解？
Oxford Dictionary解释adolescent的例句是：Many parents find it hard to understand their adolescent children.(很多父母觉得十多岁的孩子难以了解。)事实上，这亦是家长对青少年孩子的感觉。
有人试从幽默的角度看问题，说：”No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.”
Adolescent和teenager很多时会交换使用，teenager是a person aged between 13 and 19 years，13至19岁的人；与adolescence的时期相若。但Tony Little和Herb Etkin在合着的Adolescence: How to Survive It中指出，adolescence可以早过13岁开始，有时竟到28岁才结束。他们说，家长对孩子问题不用灰心：
For the family, all is not lost(尚存希望), even though it can sometimes feel like it. As long as adults do what they are supposed to do – playing by reliable(可靠的) rules and acing as fixed points on the landscape – young people, on the whole, feel safe and secure.
Tony Little是英国贵族学校Eton的前任校长，Herb Etkin是儿童和青少年心理学专家，他们在书中解释adolescent的心态，分析问题的本质和根由，再为家长提供处理的方法。
