When our children are young, we all understand that their brains are still developing and this knowledge allows us to tolerate and even delight in the amount of support they need to achieve their developmental milestones. Remember the joy you felt when your little person took their first step or managed to say their first word. When our children reach adolescence, we can suddenly find our privileged position in their lives replaced by their peers and their behaviour can leave us feeling perplexed and confused. We often attribute these changes to a surge in hormones and while this is definitely one of the things that is happening in adolescence, we now know that it is not the main event. What we are beginning to understand from the science is that when our young people reach adolescence the brain starts a remodelling project specifically designed to support them to make the transition into adulthood. This is a process that continues until our young people are in their mid