Teen energy, angst and anger manifests itself in many ways. Every day it seems that we read about some teen that has done something unusually self-destructive, and occasionally destructive to others. Columbine was an extreme example of this.  Many so-called “normal” teens tend to use or abuse the ol’ standbys of drinking, drugs, and sex to handle these emotions and changes.  For my own 16-year-old, his reaction has been mostly anger.  The irony is that I’ve found this to be both good and bad.

How hormones affect the average teen have been studied and documented, but no one really knows definitively their effect since each teen reacts in different ways.  The same is true for most women’s experience with menopause, as my wife has suffered horribly while for her mother it was a blip on the screen of her mid-life. Will has done a little of the aforementioned “standbys” stated above, to some degree. But he’s done nothing extraordinary, over-the-top, or that different from all teens with the possible exception of his recent angry moods.