“Earlier developing females may be at greater risk of developing mental health issues because they are not prepared for the physical, psychological, and social challenges brought on by puberty. For instance, girls who are early maturers “are more likely than other girls to exhibit depressive, eating, and delinquent symptoms as well as general behavioral problems.” Understanding the Young Adolescent’s Physical and Cognitive Growth

This is an issue that I think is/will be becoming more prevalent in today’s society seeing as how the statistics seem to be showing a decrease in the average age of menstruation for females. I was one of those who was ignorant of the developmental stages of young girls at this age. I recently had off-hand experience, or at least knowledge, of a young lady who had started puberty much earlier than her peers. She started gaining weight, realizing she was gaining weight, and was not equipped mentally or emotionally to deal with all of these changes in a social environment. And one of the issues was that many people around her were not understanding enough. They expected that because she was going through puberty she should be mature enough to deal with it, despite the fact that its onset was early. Her cousin though, a friend of mine at NYU, was taking child development courses here when she was going through this and he explained to me why this was so difficult for her to deal with. And it really became a serious problem. She did not want to go to school anymore, she felt alone in the world, she was fighting with her family members, she wasn’t eating, and was admitted into psychiatric institutions several times.

In this article, the author did make the point that adults need to help these students through this process. But they also mentioned that peers had more of an influence. How can we influence all the students in a class or school system to change the way they think and so quickly judge based off of differences to make students feel out of place or abnormal? And while we try to figure that out, definitely try to be that, sometimes only, confidante for a student in need.