Class 7 Science Chapter 6: Adolescence: A Stage of Growth and Change

A Cousin You Barely Recognise

Venkatesh goes to his grandparents for the summer holidays. His twelve-year-old cousin Devyani runs out to meet him, and the first thing he says is how tall she has become, and that her voice has changed. She looks at him and points out that he has a thin moustache now.

Both of Them Are Right

Neither of them has imagined it. Both are passing through a stage of life in which the body changes a good deal, and in a fairly short time. The stage has a name, and the rest of this topic is about what it involves.

Adolescence

The stage of development between childhood and adulthood is called adolescence. It usually sets in at about ten and may run on as far as nineteen. Some of its changes are easy to see and others happen inside, where nobody notices them.

Height

Start with the most obvious one. Your body has been growing taller since the day you were born, so height is nothing new. What is new is the pace: during adolescence the increase in height becomes far more prominent than before.

Body Structure and Strength

Along with height, weight and strength increase. In boys the shoulders may become a bit broader and the chest may get wider. Girls also change in height and weight, and the breasts develop. These are ordinary parts of growing up.

The Voice

The voice box is a structure in the throat that helps you speak, and during adolescence it grows. In boys it grows enough to make the voice sound hoarse for a time. The growth can show as a bump in the throat, and that bump is called the Adam apple.

Not On Everybody

Two things are worth saying about that bump. It is not noticeable on every individual, so its absence means nothing at all. And the voice box grows in girls too, though not as much, so their voice also changes, only slightly.

Skin, and What Acne Actually Is

Another common change is a skin complaint named acne, which shows up as little red spots, most often on the face. Be careful with the two words. Acne is the name of the condition, and pimples are a manifestation of it.

Why It Happens Now

There is a reason acne turns up at this stage rather than earlier. The skin produces more oily secretions during adolescence. Those can clog the pores of the skin, and clogged pores can lead to infections, which is what you see as a pimple.

Hair

Both boys and girls grow hair in places where they had none, such as the armpits and the pubic region. Boys often grow facial hair too, which thickens into a moustache and then a beard on the way to being adult. Some grow hair on the chest and back as well.

And Some Do Not

A few boys have no significant hair growth at all. Variation in whether hair appears, and in when it appears, is completely normal, and that sentence applies far more widely than to hair.

The Key Point of the Whole Topic

Whether it is height, voice or facial hair, the timing, the nature and the extent of these changes vary from person to person. Those variations are completely normal. Each person goes through adolescence at their own pace, and its duration varies too.

Why That Matters So Much

It matters because comparison is the thing most likely to worry you here. A friend of exactly your age may be a head taller, or may have started none of this. Neither of you is behind or ahead of anything, because there is no timetable to be behind.

Secondary Sexual Characteristics

Look again at some of these changes: the voice deepening, facial and chest hair in boys, breast development in girls. None of them is directly involved in reproduction. What they do is help distinguish males from females, and for that reason they have a name.

What the Name Means

They are called secondary sexual characteristics. They are the body own signals that it is getting ready to be adult, and they mark the start of something called puberty, which is the word for the stage those preparations belong to.

One More Thing About Comparison

There is a practical version of this. If you are worried about something, the useful person to ask is an adult you trust, not a friend of your own age. A friend can only tell you what happened to them, which is one case out of many.

Puberty

Puberty is the stage in which an adolescent body alters both outside and inside, until it has grown into an adult able to reproduce. The visible changes in this topic are its signs. The internal ones are the next topic.

Scenario:

A Grade 7 class lines up for the annual photograph and the teacher sorts them by height. Devyani, who is twelve, has shot up and stands at the back. Her friend Meena, also twelve, is near the front and has changed very little in a year. Two boys in the row behind are arguing: one has a thin moustache and a hoarse voice, and teases the other for having neither. The teased boy goes home convinced something is wrong with him, and his older sister tells him he simply has to wait. He wants a better answer than that.

Analysis:

His sister is right, and the better answer is the key point of this topic. The timing, the nature and the extent of every change in adolescence vary from one individual to another, and those variations are completely normal. Each person goes through the stage at their own pace, and even its duration differs. So Devyani and Meena being the same age and different heights is not a puzzle at all, and neither is the difference between the two boys. Three specific facts help him. First, facial hair appears at different times, and a few boys never develop significant hair growth. Second, the voice box grows in everybody, by different amounts and at different times, so a hoarse voice is a stage rather than an achievement. Third, the Adam apple is not noticeable in every individual. The teasing is the real problem here, not his body, and it is worth telling a teacher about.

Activity:

Look at a photograph of your own class or family from two years ago and then at one from today. Write down three changes you can see in yourself and three you can see in someone of about your age. Then note, beside each one, whether the two of you changed at the same time.

Title:

Try it in class: the slips in the jar

Safety:

No names on the slips, and no comments about any particular person. The point is the pattern, not any individual.

What You Notice:

The commonest answers are height, weight and strength, voice and appearance. Notice how often two slips disagree about when a change happens, which is the variation this topic is about.

The voice box grows in girls as well as boys, which is why their voice also alters a little.

The Adam apple is simply the growing voice box showing through, and it is not visible on everyone.

Height increases from the day you are born; adolescence is when that increase becomes impossible to miss.

Ten to nineteen: the window adolescence usually falls inside.

Secondary means it marks the difference without doing the job of reproduction.

The Half You Cannot See

The last topic was about changes you can watch happening: height, voice, skin, hair. But adolescence is not only what shows. There are changes going on inside the body at the same time, and from the outside nobody would know.

What Is Maturing

The main internal change is that the various parts of the body involved in reproduction are maturing. This is what puberty means in practice. It happens in boys and in girls, it happens gradually rather than overnight, and it is an ordinary part of growing up.

Why It Is Worth Naming

It would be easy to leave the internal half out, because you cannot point at it. But leaving it out gives a false picture of what adolescence is, and it is also the half that most of the questions people are shy about actually concern.

One Important Change in Girls

In girls, one important internal change is the menstrual cycle beginning. It is a natural cycle that starts during adolescence and then repeats. In everyday speech it is usually called the period.

How Often It Comes

The cycle generally recurs every 28 to 30 days. That is the usual figure, and it is the one most often quoted, but it is not a rule that every body follows.

And the Healthy Range

Many perfectly healthy girls have longer or shorter cycles, anywhere from 21 to 35 days. So a cycle that is not 28 days is not a problem. This matters, because a girl who expects exactly 28 and gets 24 may otherwise think something is wrong.

A Sign of Good Health

It is worth being clear about how to think of the cycle. It is an important natural process, and a sign that reproductive health is in good order. It is not an illness, and it is not something that needs hiding.

Menstruation Itself

Within the cycle there is a phase in which blood discharge occurs from the body, and that phase is what menstruation means. It may last from three to seven days. So the cycle is the whole repeating pattern, and menstruation is a few days inside it.

How It Feels

Some girls ache or feel uncomfortable low in the belly during these days, and some do not. Both are ordinary. Rest, warmth and a word with a parent or a teacher all help, and there is nothing to be embarrassed about in asking.

When It Stops

Menstruation begins at puberty, and usually by the age of 45 to 55 it stops naturally. That marks the end of reproductive capability in a woman life. Nothing is done to bring it about; it is as natural as the beginning was.

Now the Part That Needs Correcting

Around this entirely natural process a great many wrong beliefs have grown up. They lead to unnecessary fear, to shame, and even to guilt, and over time they have hardened into myths and taboos that get passed on without being questioned.

The Commonest One

The most widespread of them is the physical isolation of menstruating girls, which is unfortunately still quite prevalent. A girl may be kept apart from others, from the kitchen, or from ordinary household life for the days of her period.

What Science Says About It

Menstruation is a natural process, and these myths have no scientific basis. Not a weak basis, or an old-fashioned one: none. There is no finding anywhere that supports isolating a girl, and plenty of harm in doing it.

Why It Is Worth Arguing About

Because the cost is real. A girl made to feel ashamed of a healthy process is less likely to ask for help when something needs attention. She is less likely to go to school on those days. And she is more likely to pass the same fear on to somebody else.

What Changes It

Encouraging a scientific outlook towards menstruation is how this shifts. If society sees it as the natural process it is, it can get on with the useful work: promoting good reproductive health for women and contributing to a healthier way of living.

One Practical Note

If anything about your own cycle worries you, the right person to tell is a parent, a teacher or a doctor. None of them will find the question odd, and there is nothing in it to be embarrassed about.

What to Take From This Topic

Two things, and they belong together. First, the facts: the cycle, its range, what menstruation is, how long it lasts, when it stops. Second, that the taboos attached to all of it are simply wrong, and that knowing the facts is what lets you say so.

Scenario:

A village school finds that its Grade 7 girls are missing three or four days of class every month. When a teacher asks why, the answers come slowly. One girl says there is nowhere private in the school. Another says her grandmother keeps her at home and out of the kitchen for those days. A third says she is simply too embarrassed to come. The head teacher proposes buying a cupboard of sanitary pads and leaving it at that. A young teacher argues that the cupboard will not fix two of the three answers, and that the school has to say something out loud as well as buy something.

Analysis:

The young teacher is right, and the three answers are usefully different. The first is a facilities problem, and a supply of pads and a private space is exactly the fix for it. The second and third are not about supplies at all. Keeping a girl at home and out of the kitchen is the physical isolation taboo. It is still quite prevalent and has no scientific basis whatsoever. The embarrassment is what those wrong beliefs produce: fear, shame and even guilt around a natural process. A cupboard cannot reach either of them, because neither is caused by a shortage of pads. What reaches them is encouraging a scientific outlook, so that a period is understood as the natural process it is, and as an indication that reproductive health is good. The cost of not doing it is visible in the register: girls losing a tenth of their schooling to a belief with nothing behind it.

Activity:

Find out what your own school provides for menstrual hygiene, and whether there is a private space and a proper way to dispose of used pads. Write down one thing the school already does well and one thing you would ask for, and give the reason for the second in a single sentence.

Title:

Try it with your class: separating facts from beliefs

Safety:

Do not write about any particular person, and do not name anybody. The point is the belief, never the believer.

What You Notice:

The second column fills faster than the first, and in every case the answer to "what supports it" turns out to be nothing. That is the whole point: menstruation is a natural process and these myths have no scientific basis.

A cycle of 21 days and a cycle of 35 days are both perfectly healthy, so there is no single correct length.

The menstrual cycle is counted as one of the signs that a body reproductive health is good.

Menstruation stops naturally at around 45 to 55 years of age, without anything being done to stop it.

Cycle is the whole repeat; menstruation is the few days of bleeding inside it.

Twenty-eight to thirty is usual, twenty-one to thirty-five is still healthy.

Something Else Has Changed

So far this chapter has been about the body: what grows, what alters, what happens inside. But if you ask people what they remember about being thirteen, very few of them start with their height. They talk about how things felt.

Make Your Own List First

Before reading on, take a moment. Think about whether anything has changed in your emotions or behaviour over the last year or two, or in those of your friends. Some of it may be exciting, some confusing, and quite a lot of it both at once.

The Pattern People Report

Put those lists together across a class and the same items keep appearing. Mood swings, where you feel one way and then quite differently with no obvious reason. Strong emotions, arriving at full volume. And increased sensitivity, noticing and feeling things more keenly than before.

Why This Happens Now

The feelings of adolescence usually arrive with more force than a child did was. It is worth being precise about that: the feelings themselves are not new. You were happy and angry and embarrassed as a small child too. What has altered is the force they arrive with.

Emotions Push on Behaviour

Stronger feelings have effects, and those effects show up in what people do. Someone who feels things keenly may act on it. Someone in a low mood may withdraw. The emotion does not stay inside; it leans on the next thing you do.

And the Pushing Is Not All Bad

This is where the topic turns. The effects named in the book are mostly good ones. Adolescents take up and join efforts set up to help those in need and those who have least. They develop a much deeper interest in some new area than they ever had before.

Where Did That Come From?

Look at where those two come from, because it is not an accident. Joining a social initiative is increased sensitivity pointed outwards at somebody else trouble. A deep new interest is strong feeling attached to a subject rather than a mood.

So the Question Is What You Do With It

That gives the useful way to think about all of this. Strong feelings are not a problem to be fixed. They are something with force in them, and the question is what you point that force at.

Varied Activities

The first answer is to engage in varied activities: music, dance, sport, anything that takes some doing. These work as an outlet, meaning they give a strong feeling somewhere to go. That is why they are suggested here and not only in a chapter about fitness.

Self-Exploration

The second is self-exploration, which sounds vague until you see where it leads. Trying things to find out what you are drawn to is the ordinary route into pursuits out of which something creative or new may come. Most creative work starts exactly there.

Compassion

The third is compassion and involvement in social work. This is the direct use of increased sensitivity: feeling someone else difficulty more keenly, and then doing something about it. The feeling becomes a reason to act rather than a weight to carry.

Three Columns Worth Drawing

A table helps here. In one column, the emotional change. In the next, its probable effect on behaviour. In the third, a way of turning it towards positive growth. Mood swings, varied activities. Increased sensitivity, compassion and social work.

The Line That Does the Work

Now the sentence this whole topic is for. Seeing how a feeling steers our conduct and our actions puts better choices within reach, and lets us answer a situation thoughtfully instead of merely reacting to it.

Why Understanding Changes Anything

Because a feeling you have not noticed simply becomes an action. A feeling you have noticed leaves you a moment in which to pick the action. That moment is small, and it is the whole difference between reacting and choosing.

One Thing That Is Not The Point

Note what this topic does NOT say. It does not say that you should feel less, or that calm people are managing better. Imagine two people with exactly the same strong feeling, one who notices it and one who does not. Only the first one has a choice.

So It Is A Skill

That makes this a skill rather than a temperament. A skill can be practised, and the practice is simply naming the feeling to yourself as it arrives. It gets easier, and nothing about the feeling itself has to change.

What to Carry Forward

So: emotions run stronger now than they did, they push on what you do, and most of what they push towards can be useful if it has somewhere to go. Noticing the link is the skill. The next topic is about looking after the body those feelings live in.

Scenario:

Rohit and Imran are in the same Grade 7 cricket team, which loses a match badly. Rohit feels it so sharply that he snaps at a younger boy on the way home and then cannot explain why. Imran feels the same disappointment, notices himself wanting to blame somebody, says nothing, and spends the evening in the nets instead. A week later Rohit has fallen out with two teammates. Imran has got noticeably better at bowling. Their coach says they both felt exactly the same thing, and that the difference between them is not about temperament.

Analysis:

The coach is right, and the difference is the one this topic is about. Both boys had the same strong feeling, which is ordinary, because adolescence is often marked by emotions stronger than those of childhood. What separated them is what happened in the moment after. Rohit feeling ran straight on into an action. So snapping at the younger boy did not feel like a choice at all, and he could not explain it afterwards because there was nothing to explain. Imran noticed the feeling and noticed what it was pushing him towards, which is blame, and that noticing opened a gap in which he could pick something else. Then he did the second useful thing: he gave the leftover force an outlet, which is exactly what varied activities such as sport are for. Note what is NOT the explanation. Imran is not calmer by nature and he did not feel it less. He understood how the emotion was influencing his behaviour, and that is a skill rather than a temperament.

Activity:

Keep a note for one week. Each time you notice a strong feeling, write down the feeling, what it pushed you towards, and what you actually did. At the end of the week look for the rows where those last two columns differ, and see what you did in that gap.

Title:

Try it yourself: the three-column list

Safety:

Write about your own feelings, never about a named person. If anything on your list worries you, show it to an adult you trust.

What You Notice:

Most lists overlap a great deal, which is the first useful discovery. The second is that the third column is usually easier to fill than you expect once the first two are written down.

Increased sensitivity is the same change that makes many adolescents take up social work.

Mood swings are among the most commonly reported emotional changes of this stage.

A deeper interest in one new area often begins in adolescence and lasts a lifetime.

Notice the feeling, then choose the action. The gap between them is where the choice lives.

Strong feelings are fuel; music, sport and helping are places to put the fuel.

A Body Under Construction

You met the idea of a healthy diet in Grade 6. Nothing about it has stopped being true. What has changed is how much is being asked of it, because adolescence is a stretch of fast growing, with a number of alterations going on in the body at once.

Where the Material Comes From

All of that growing has to be built out of something, and the something is food. That is why a nutritious diet is of the utmost importance at this stage rather than merely a good idea.

The Obvious Two

To grow properly, and to last a whole game on the field, you need proteins and carbohydrates. Those are the two most people name first, and they are the right two to name.

And the Rest

But they are not enough on their own. You also need enough fat, enough vitamins and enough minerals. Enough is the useful word there: not as much as possible, just enough.

Which Food Does Which Job

The interesting part is matching a food to a job. Take milk, millets, curd, cheese and paneer. They supply calcium, along with proteins and fats. The calcium helps optimal bone growth, which is exactly what a body gaining height needs.

The Iron Group

Now take spinach, kidney beans, and dried fruits such as raisins and figs. These look like an odd group until you see what they share: iron. Iron helps in the formation of blood.

What Proteins Do

Proteins earn a third line of their own. They help proper growth, help you gain strength, and improve your levels of energy. So they turn up in the first group as well as on their own, which is why they get mentioned so often.

When Something Is Missing

Here is why this matters practically. A shortage of iron, or of vitamin B12, can leave adolescents with blood-related health problems, and girls especially. A deficiency simply means not enough of it.

Why That Particular Pair

Notice that both of those are tied to blood. Iron is needed for the formation of blood, so a shortage shows up there first. Vitamin B12 is needed for the body to work as it should, and blood is where a shortage of it tends to show.

The Scientist Who Worked B12 Out

Vitamin B12 has a story attached. Dorothy Hodgkin studied its structure, and in 1964 she became the third woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Working out what a vitamin is actually built like is painstaking work.

The Fact Worth Keeping

And here is the fact from that work that you should carry. As with most vitamins, the body has no way of building vitamin B12. Not slowly, not in small amounts: not at all. Every bit of it has to come in with what we eat.

Now the Second Half

Besides nutrition, personal hygiene is crucially important during adolescence. The body is changing, and some of those changes make cleanliness matter more than it did.

Where to Pay Attention

Washing well, and especially under the arms and around the pubic region, can keep infections away. Those are the places where hair has newly appeared and where the skin secretes more, so they are the ones needing attention.

Hygiene During Menstruation

For girls there is more to it. Keeping clean through a period matters as much for being comfortable as for staying well. Sanitary pads are made for it, and so are reusable cloth pads meant for the purpose.

Disposal, Which Is Part of It

A used sanitary pad should be wrapped in newspaper and disposed of inside a dustbin. That is not fussiness. It protects community health and keeps the environment clean, and both of those are everybody business. Biodegradable pads are also available now.

What Is Being Done

Several government initiatives exist. The Menstrual Hygiene Scheme hands pads to adolescent girls in the villages, for nothing or very cheaply, with awareness programmes alongside. The Suvidha initiative supplies biodegradable pads affordably through Jan Aushadhi Kendras.

And One That Works Differently

The Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram takes in adolescent health as a whole, menstrual health among it, and it backs teaching between students, with the older ones showing the younger. States have their own too, such as the Shuchi Scheme in Karnataka.

What Is Left To Us

Schemes can supply pads; they cannot supply an attitude. We should make sure the necessary facilities exist in schools and public places, and reduce the stigma around sanitary pads. That part is not the government job. It is ours.

Scenario:

Ananya is thirteen, opens the batting for her school team, and has started getting tired halfway through a match. Her mother says she must be eating too little and starts giving her more rice. Her coach says she needs more protein and suggests paneer. A neighbour says all she needs is rest. After a month of extra rice nothing has improved, and a doctor who sees her asks first about her diet and then orders a blood test. Ananya is puzzled: she eats more than anyone in her class and she is still tired.

Analysis:

The doctor asking for a blood test is the clue to what the others missed. Eating more of one thing is not the same as eating enough of everything. Rice is largely carbohydrate, so her mother was adding energy she already had. The coach suggestion of paneer is better, since paneer brings proteins, which help proper growth and strength and improve energy levels, and it brings calcium for bone growth as well. But the blood test points at the likelier answer. Adolescents, and especially girls, may suffer from blood-related health problems because of a deficiency of iron or of vitamin B12. Iron is needed for the formation of blood, and a shortage of it would explain tiredness that more rice cannot fix. The foods that would help are the iron group: spinach, kidney beans, and dried fruits such as raisins and figs. Note the shape of the mistake. All three adults reasoned from quantity, and the question was which nutrient.

Activity:

Write out everything you ate yesterday and mark beside each item which nutrient it mainly supplies. Then check whether anything on your list carries iron, and anything carries calcium. If a column is empty, find one locally available food that would fill it.

Title:

Try it at home: the food, nutrient and job table

Safety:

Just look and ask; there is no need to cook anything. Do not change what you eat without talking to an adult first.

What You Notice:

Most kitchens turn out to cover calcium easily and iron less well. The table makes that visible in a way that thinking about it does not, which is the point of writing it down.

Dorothy Hodgkin worked out the structure of vitamin B12 and won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1964.

She was only the third woman ever to win that prize in chemistry.

Biodegradable sanitary pads are now available, and they are friendlier to the environment.

Calcium builds bone, iron builds blood, protein builds the rest.

B12 cannot be made inside you, so it has to be eaten.

Move

Start with the simplest piece of advice in the chapter. Regular exercise and physical activity matter a great deal during adolescence. Whatever you do, games, sport, or anything that takes effort, it keeps the body and the mind fit and healthy.

Two Benefits Worth Naming Separately

It builds up your stamina, which is the physical half. And it boosts your mood, which is not. That second half connects back to the emotional changes of the last topic. Then the people around you: be polite and respectful, which produces a favourable and safe environment.

Why This Stage In Particular

Adolescence is a stage marked by new experiences and new emotions, so we have to deal with other people thoughtfully and responsibly. This is also the time when young people may be drawn to those their own age, and may copy their conduct.

Mimicking Cuts Both Ways

Notice that mimicking is neutral in itself. Copying a friend who studies hard or trains hard is how a good habit spreads. Copying one who does something harmful is how the next section of this topic becomes a problem. Same mechanism, opposite result.

In Person and Online

The instruction covers both. Adolescents often interact online, so being thoughtful applies there as much as face to face. The platform changes; the behaviour required does not. And those platforms give us real gains: information, connections, and sharing.

And the Condition Attached

We ought to handle them responsibly, so that everybody benefits rather than somebody suffers. Sometimes, whether we mean to or not, we handle them carelessly. That second case is the honest one, because a lot of harm online is not intended by anybody.

Cyberbullying

The clearest example is cyberbullying: going after somebody by means of a phone, a computer or an online space. It takes three forms. Sending misleading messages. Spreading false rumours. And sharing personal information WITHOUT CONSENT, which means without permission from the person it belongs to.

If It Happens To You

Here is the part to remember rather than the definition. If someone tries to bully you, the thing that matters is not to let yourself feel frightened or powerless. Deal with it sensibly and get your parents and teachers involved. The feeling of being helpless is itself the mistake.

And Two Precautions

Be cautious when uploading any picture online, and when sharing personal information with strangers. The simple list is: treat people decently, stop and think before you post, guard your privacy, and never share personal photos with strangers or virtual friends.

The Hardest Section

Now the part this chapter builds up to carefully. Your own peers may be among the people who coax you, talk you round, lean on you or simply force you into taking harmful substances. Tobacco, gutka, cigarettes, beedi, alcohol and life-threatening illegal drugs are all of that kind.

Why Adolescents In Particular

The chapter is specific about why this lands here. Adolescence is marked by curiosity and excitement, which is a strength almost everywhere else in life. Here it is exactly the thing that makes getting influenced and trying something more likely.

Two Harms, Not One

These substances harm physical and mental health. But the second half is what makes them different from other dangerous things: they are addictive. Once people start, a powerful wish to have them once more takes hold, until use becomes regular. That is substance abuse.

What Follows

The health problems are serious and depend on the substance. Trouble with breathing, a failing memory, and lungs that have been damaged are the ones named here. A pair of pictures of lungs before and after prolonged exposure to smoke makes the point faster than a sentence.

Where the Whole Thing Turns

So where is the decision actually made? Right at the start. Say no to addictive substances at the first asking and at every asking after that. Someone who is addicted now very likely began on a single occasion, believing that a single occasion could not count.

If Someone Is Already In Trouble

Getting out of an addiction begins by asking family and friends for support, and by telling an adult you trust, a parent or a teacher. Counselling and medical advice help too. There is also a National De-addiction Helpline, on 14446.

One National Effort

One national effort, the Nasha Mukt Bharat Abhiyaan, comes from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. It spreads awareness about avoiding substance abuse by drawing in young people, women and whole communities, and concentrates on prevention among younger children.

And Finally, Why Any of This Happens

One question has waited since the start of the chapter. Why do these changes arrive at this stage of life? The answer is hormones: certain chemicals produced in our own bodies. Many changes of adolescence, including menstruation, are mainly due to them. They regulate growth and development and the proper functioning of the body.

And How They Are Controlled

Different parts of the body make them, and each is let out at the right moment when the brain signals for it. So the timing is not random. And some hormones influence mood and behaviour, which ties the emotional topic back to the physical ones.

Scenario:

A Grade 7 class has a group chat. One evening somebody posts a photograph of a classmate, Ritu, taken at a family function, with a caption making fun of her clothes. Within an hour it has been forwarded to two other groups. Four students react differently. Aman forwards it because everybody else has. Sana does not forward it but says nothing. Kabir replies with an insult aimed at whoever posted it. Ritu sees it, feels she cannot tell anybody, and stops coming to school. A teacher who finds out says that only one of the four responses was actually wise, and that Aman defence of not meaning any harm is both true and beside the point.

Analysis:

The teacher is right on both counts. What happened to Ritu is cyberbullying: the use of digital devices and online platforms to harass somebody, and in this case by sharing personal information without consent. Note that the photograph may be perfectly genuine, which changes nothing, because what makes it bullying is the absence of permission. Aman is the clearest case of the chapter own warning. We sometimes use these platforms carelessly, knowingly or unknowingly. Not meaning harm is exactly what unknowingly means, and the harm happened anyway. That is why thinking before posting is on the list. Kabir reply fails too, because answering harassment with more of it adds a second problem rather than solving the first. Sana came closest, and still fell short of telling an adult. Ritu response is the one the chapter speaks to most directly. She felt scared and helpless. The instruction is precisely not to, but to deal with it sensibly and bring in parents and teachers. The wise response available to all four was the same one: stop the forwarding and tell an adult.

Activity:

Look at the last ten things you forwarded or posted, or that were sent to a group you belong to. For each one write whether it was about a person, and whether that person had given permission. Then write down one rule you would like your own group chat to follow.

Title:

Try it in class: the refusal practice

Safety:

Keep this about words and situations, never about any real person or any real incident. Tell the teacher if any of it worries you.

What You Notice:

Deciding the words in advance is what makes a refusal easier. That is the whole point of practising. Deciding while somebody stands in front of you is far harder. The answer is no at the first asking, and at every asking after it.

Exercise is listed here for your mood as much as for your muscles.

The National De-addiction Helpline number is 14446.

Each hormone is let out at the right moment, when the brain signals for it.

Say no on the first occasion and on every occasion after, because every addiction began with just one time.

Hormones are chemical messages, and the brain decides when to send them.