Secrets of the teenage brain
Secrets of the teenage brain
Why are teenagers such moody, lazy, selfish nightmares? We gave readers the chance to ask Frances E Jensen, author of a new book on the adolescent mind, how to deal with these hormonal time bombs
Several years ago Frances E Jensen’s 16-year-old son wrote off a car. A few years earlier, her other son had returned from a friend’s house with his hair dyed jet black. The University of Pennsylvania neurologist was finding her teenagers’ erratic behaviour increasingly taxing, so she decided to study teenage thought processes and gathered her research in the book The Teenage Brain. She found that while much had been written about teen psychology and parenting, no one had explained the neurons and cerebral connections that make those years such a unique – and terrifying – part of growing up. The teenage brain has only recently become a subject for serious research, which shows how little was known about it.
But does knowing what is going on in a teenager’s brain make them any easier to live with? Without a doubt, says Jensen, who thinks that her research allowed her to be more patient with her sons. “We expect a little bit more out of adolescents than we should, given where their brains are,” she says.
Given that the relationship between parents and teenagers is one of the most fraught in family life, we asked readers to send in questions for Jensen to tackle.
Clothes left in the bathroom, losing things, plates festering under the bed… Why doesn’t my teenager care about being tidy?Tidiness needs a sophisticated level of cognitive control, and the way the teenage brain is connected means that their planning is not very good. Parts of the brain connect to each other through synapses, which are insulated, just like electric wires. That insulation is a fatty substance called myelin, which is created over time. The process takes years, and it starts at the back of the brain and slowly moves forward. The last bits of the brain to connect are the frontal and prefrontal cortices, where insight, empathy and risk taking are controlled. This means that very smart adolescents will do very stupid things in a very impulsive way. I don’t think organisation is a high priority for most teenagers. They have other things to worry about – they are messy because they don’t give themselves enough time to tidy up before they run off to do something else.
Why does my daughter always seem so angry, especially with me?Teenagers can get frustrated with situations and themselves, as a lot of things still aren’t fitting together in their brain. The risk-taking behaviour and impulsivity they exhibit because they don’t have full access to their frontal lobes can cause mood swings and fuel conflict and anger. Adults can respond to this behaviour in an angry fashion themselves. While I’m not condoning teens’ erratic behaviour, the hope is that by understanding what is going on inside their child’s head, parents will be a bit more patient and might be able to stop themselves reacting and setting up a vicious cycle by alienating their child. Try to stay close to your teenagers, even if they seem to push you away. Always count to 10 and think twice. This is a time when mental illness can come on, and anger can be a front for depression or other anxiety disorders. Are they just being surly, or is there another explanation?
I feel increasingly cut out from my teenager’s life. Why won’t they talk to me properly? The teens are an age of self-discovery and novelty-seeking behaviour, and it’s natural that they will start to cut ties. Teenagers need to become independent, but we live in a very complex world, and no other teenage generation in history has had this much stimulation and exposure to the many potential stresses that arise from their being online. Because of this, parents do need to be vigilant and stay connected with them. I used to love car drives with my children because we were just looking straight ahead, and the lack of eye contact helped us to start talking about sensitive things.
Why won’t my teenager go to bed, and why can’t I get them up in the morning? There is absolutely a biological basis for this. In many other mammals, like baby rodents, sleep patterns shift during the adolescent period. From puberty to the end of the teens, the circadian clock is actually programming them to go to sleep and wake up around three to four hours later than adults. This is a problem, as they are relatively sleep deprived when you wake them up at 8am. It’s something we might want to think about as a society and in education systems, as chronic sleep deprivation is certainly not helping teenagers do their biggest job, which is to go to school. We know how important sleep is for consolidation of memory and learning. It’s all about strengthening synapses, a process which is chemically impaired in a sleep-deprived brain. This could be a reason for the fights, too – everyone knows that sleep deprivation makes you emotionally impulsive.
If you are interested in much more aspects of the problem please be sure to visit the original article @ http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/25/secrets-of-the-teenage-brain
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