The Enigma That Is The Adolescent Brain


My mother once declared, in a matter-of-fact voice, that there were days during my pre-teen and teenage years when she was certain that portions of my brain had drained out of my ears and onto my pillow during the night while I slept.  Many parents express similar feelings during the adolescent years of their children.  Some parents wonder if their children are the only ones who have brainless moments and begin to question whether they have done something wrong in their parenting.  

During a child's adolescent years, the brain is changing and becoming that of an adult's brain.  In fact, in most respects, the teenage brain is fully developed.  However, two primary factors create the whirlwind of emotions and impulsiveness that characterize the teenage years: (1) the pre-frontal cortex & (2) lack of experience. 

The pre-frontal cortex is the last part of the brain to develop and doesn't fully develop until around 23 years old.  This portion of the brain is responsible for evaluating whether an impulse is a good idea or not.  This in turn leads to those moments when parents ask, "what were you thinking?"

Secondly, adolescents lack the experiences adults do.  Teenagers are beginning to have adult thoughts and adult emotions, but they often don't know what to do with either of these because they lack the experience necessary to properly evaluate these new feelings and thought processes.

All this to say, the next time your adolescent does something that doesn't make sense or acts out in a way that causes you to question the presence of a brain in their head, take a deep breath and consider if this is a moment in which you might be able to assist them by walking them through the decision making process.  In other words, instead of simply expecting them to act like an adult, take a few moments to teach and show them what an adult looks like.

Mark Oestreicher has written a wonderful, and concise, book on this subject entitled A Parent's Guide to Understanding Teenage Brains: Why They Act the Way They Do.  I highly recommend it if you desire to explore this subject further.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

God Was Here

  As a child, I attended Camp Lylewood every year for church camp.  It was a glorious time of adventure and excitement as every church camp should be.  The boys’ cabins were on one side of the property, so as to separate boys from girls.  (Though this measure never stopped the boys from using a massive slingshot to launch water balloons at the girls).  Inside the cabins were rows of bunkbeds.  Inevitably, the underside of each upper bunk bore the name of some boy who had been there before.  Carved, etched, or drawn in the wood comprising the bedframe were names of boys who had enjoyed camp and who desired to let others know that they had been there and that they had left their mark on this place.  So, they proudly scrawled Tom, Danny, or John "was here." Genesis 2 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture.  In it we read how God "formed man out of the dust of the earth" (2:7).  The imagery here is that of God rolling up His sleeves and getting His hands dirty as
Read more

Embrace Your Inner Toddler

  Perhaps there are no two letters that change the relationship between parent and child more than those that form the word,  NO .  Up until a toddler learns this word, he or she appears to be such an angel.  Then, one day, that dreaded word touches his lips and the battle of wills between parent and child begins.  Yet, somewhere during our transition from childhood to adulthood we lose our ability to say, "NO."  We would all do well to embrace our inner toddler and utilize this word more.   This year has been a challenge for many, myself included.  Faced with the challenge of working from home while also attempting to maintain some semblance of a "normal" home life, I found that often the lines between family, work, and self-care were regularly blurred.  My responsibilities to my job, to my wife, to my son, and to myself all made demands upon my time and I felt myself being pulled in all directions.  My solution was simple: multi-task and do it all.  With my conf
Read more

Surviving 2020

The theme song for the year of 2020 should be Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive .  For all of you who just started singing it in your head, here's the link:  I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor .  Seriously though, 2020 has seen a pandemic, social unrest, a near collision with an asteroid, zombie fires (those are a thing??), murder hornets, re-emergence of cicadas, a Sahara dust cloud, tornadoes, earthquakes, broken dams, and skyrocketing unemployment and it's only July.  This will be a year to tell the grand kids as they sit wide-eyed listening to the struggles of the past.  Unfortunately, 2020 has also been a year for disappointment.  Seniors have lost out on graduations and senior proms, families have been forced to cancel long-awaited vacations, and kids have had their summer plans turned on their heads.  To say that 2020 has been hard to take in and process would be a huge understatement.  If ever there was a year to point to as proof of the need for the confidence faith in
Read more