Adolescent可用作名詞或形容詞。 Adolescent用作名詞，解an adolescent boy or girl，少男或少女；用作形容詞，adolescent解(of a young person) in the process of developing from a child into an adult，由孩子發展成為成人的過程、青春期的。
Adolescence是名詞，解the period following the onset of puberty during which a young person develops from a child into an adult，青春期、青少年時期。有英國專欄作家寫道，孩子進入青春期，作為父母的可能會有這樣的感覺：
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(漸變) into a teenage monster.
Mourn解哀悼，除了是人，為逝去的事物傷感也可以用mourn這個動詞。例如mourn a relationship that didn’t work out(為沒結果的一段關係感到傷痛)，而父母就可能會為孩子由小可愛變成小魔怪而感到哀傷。
但家長和師長都知道，孩子變為adolescents，可以是個很富挑戰的時期。有時真會覺得他們的行為有點像monster(魔怪)。但青少年的魔怪行為與成年人有關：”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.”(青少年並不是魔怪。他們只是在學習怎樣在成人世界中自處，但很多成人連自己也不知道怎樣自處。)
為處理家中青少年問題而覺得頭痛的父母，可看以下的分享：
Our youth now love luxury(生活奢侈). They have bad manners, contempt(藐視) 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(駁斥) their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food(狼吞虎咽) and tyrannize(專橫地對待、欺壓、虐待) their teachers.
這段話是對這一代adolescents十分貼切的描述，不過說這話的是古希臘哲學家蘇格拉底，原來adolescent的問題不是今天才有，幾千年前的adolescents也是一模一樣，沒有分別！
被了解或誤解？
Oxford Dictionary解釋adolescent的例句是：Many parents find it hard to understand their adolescent children.(很多父母覺得十多歲的孩子難以了解。)事實上，這亦是家長對青少年孩子的感覺。
有人試從幽默的角度看問題，說：”No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.”
Adolescent和teenager很多時會交換使用，teenager是a person aged between 13 and 19 years，13至19歲的人；與adolescence的時期相若。但Tony Little和Herb Etkin在合著的Adolescence: How to Survive It中指出，adolescence可以早過13歲開始，有時竟到28歲才結束。他們說，家長對孩子問題不用灰心：
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是英國貴族學校Eton的前任校長，Herb Etkin是兒童和青少年心理學專家，他們在書中解釋adolescent的心態，分析問題的本質和根由，再為家長提供處理的方法。
