During the process of transition from childhood to adulthood, children may make choices that might endanger their lives or put their lives at risk. Therefore, these choices constitutes some high risk behaviors which has the tendency and ability to form adult behavior and they have repercussions which are costly to the society and to the children themselves.
There are some common risk behaviors exhibited by children and adolescents which includes engaging in sexual activity, illegal substance abuse, and illegal activities like vandalism or robbery, playing truancy in school, violence and even causing harm to themselves. For instance when children become sexually active, their response and behaviors towards sex if negative, may result in a high rate of unwanted pregnancy or even sexually transmitted infections.
Many a times, a lot of these children and even their parents are unaware of the dangers or risks that are involved in engaging in sexual activity and also the infections that come along with it. They perform activities without taking careful precautions, hence leading into unwanted pregnancy and an adverse effect may end up in abortion.
Also, there is an increasing rate of the abuse of substance such as cigarette, drugs etc. Children take risk with the misusage of medications prescribed by a medical personnel. Drinking excessively which is a risk behavior to the use of alcohol, is also common among young ones. The misuse or abuse of these substances tend to have an adverse effect on them. Sometimes, it alters the thinking capacity and harm decision making abilities, causing harmful psychological behaviors and could result to mental illness.
Likewise, children and adolescents are sometimes exposed to violence and abuse, and as a result brings them to a state of depression and melancholy. In response to this, they release emotional pain when they are traumatized by probably thinking of inflicting injuries on themselves or even committing suicide. They are forced to have a negative orientation about the society and hence they take up undesirable behaviors.
In addition, children who finds themselves in low-income families do not have the opportunity to receive adequate and substantial formal education, and so there is a high affinity not to do well academically or even have the cause to drop out and obtain a high risk behavior. Similarly, some children play truancy in school as a result of a lackadaisical attitude towards education leading to negative inclinations.