Physical Development

Back to: Teens and Young Adults – Addressing the Impact of Trauma – Online Training

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

We’ll begin this section on Physical Development discussing typical physical development beginning with young teens.  You’ll learn about early puberty and the enormous physical changes brought about by the middle to late teens, culminating in full sexual maturity by early adulthood.  We’ll then move on to the effects of trauma on physical development in teens and young adults, including changes in growth, as well as changes in the brain as a result of trauma.  We will follow these introductory sections with suggestions about how to use relationship based practices for trauma-informed care to help promote physical development with teens and young adults -beginning with the use of physicality to address the effects of trauma, then thinking, relationships, and lastly, feelings.  You’ll come to understand that trauma affects all aspects of development—those that we can see on the body and those that are buried deep in the mind and brain.