Understanding the amazing teenage brain

 

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-twenties! Understanding these changes places us in a much stronger position to support them to make a successful transition into adulthood.   

Essentially two big things are happening in the brain, both of which are really important.  Firstly, the adolescent brain is going through what Dan Siegel calls a pruning process where it starts to get rid of the neural pathways that are no longer being used.  He coined the phrase “use it or lose it” to help us to understand this process - the brain will get really good at the things the young person spends time doing and not so great at those things they ignore.   The reason this happens is to allow the brain to specialise in the things that are important to that young person, generally the things that they are passionate about.  The second thing that happens during this reconstruction period is something called myelin formation – what this means is that the connectivity between the specialised parts of the brain increase.  In essence these two processes lead to more efficient and effective brain.

All of this remodelling has a significant impact on the day to day lives of our teenagers.   Dan Siegel in his book, Brainstorm, has identified four primary aspects that can help us and our young people to understand these changes.  He has summarised this using the acronym ESSENCE.

·       Emotional Spark

·       Social Engagement

·       Novelty

·       Creative Exploration

Emotional Spark

The part of the teenage brain that is under construction is called the prefrontal cortex.   This is the part of our brain that many people call the control tower – it is responsible for good decision making, planning, flexible thinking  - all the fantastic executive functioning skills that allow us to make good decisions.  Because this part of the brain is under construction during adolescence it is not always available to our teenagers meaning many of their decisions are influenced much more by the emotional rather than the rational part of their brain. 

On the one hand this is fantastic because this is where their big bright shining passion and vitality come from.  And it is these emotions that drive our young people to try new things and to engage with new people all of which power their ability to eventually leave home.   The more difficult part to the emotional spark is the fact that it makes life less predictable because the one thing we know for sure about emotions is that they can shift with rapid pace especially in adolescence.  And for this reason, when emotions are in the driving seat, the journey can feel pretty bumpy for everyone involved. 

Social engagement

We all know that our teens can get pretty preoccupied with their peers, often to the exclusion of their parents.  This often starts in the older years of primary school, suddenly your daughter only wants you to drop her to the school gate not the classroom door or your son wants to walk to his drama lesson on his own instead of with you.  This can be very painful as a parent and we can often feel rejected or abandoned.   But what we now know from the brain science is that our teenagers are biologically programmed to push away from us and go towards their peers.    This again is part of the drive for independence. In order for our young people be able to leave home they need to become part of a new tribe and the need for social acceptance can be more important than anything else.   This is why when our young people experience ruptures in their peer group this can literally feel life threatening, such is the drive for belonging in adolescence.   From a parent’s perspective you will see this when your young person desperately wants to go to the overnight party or get the £170 Nike shoes that everyone is wearing.   This doesn’t mean you need to let them go or buy the shoes but it’s important to recognise what is driving their desire and respond with understanding and compassion. It is this drive for social connectedness that helps our young people to develop good interpersonal skills leading to supportive long-term relationships.  

Novelty

Our young people love new things, particularly new things that are a little (or a big) bit risky. On the one hand this is incredibly positive because it creates inner motivation to try new things and figure stuff out which again facilitates the ultimate goal of becoming an independent adult.  The downside of this fantastic change is that our adolescence often emphasises the thrill and excitement and downplay the potential risk.  Dan Siegel calls this hyperrational thinking.  Often, because novelty is so attractive, an idea can become an action without taking a pause to consider the potential consequences.   As parents what is important to recognise is that novelty seeking is part of the package and instead of fighting against it, we need to support them to find ways to live a life full of adventure and challenge while also supporting them to think about the consequences and possible risks.  Essentially it is about supporting them to PAUSE in that small gap between the idea and the action.

Creative exploration

Once our children reach adolescence, they have so much more ability to think in more complex ways and often want to push against boundaries and forge their own path.    As parents or carers this can feel pretty tricky to manage.  There are two things that are important to remember.  Firstly, this pushing is what powers their ability to eventually make that transition from adolescence into adulthood.  Secondly this is not an easy transition and it’s important to remember that beneath the pushing and pulling our teenagers can often feel disillusioned with life.  They begin to recognise that you and I are just fallible human beings and we are often removed from the pedestal we once occupied during their childhood.  They can often struggle with their identity and where they fit with their peer group and can feel completely discombobulated while they are trying to figure all of this out.   However, their capacity for creativity is also incredibly positive.  What we now know is that a 16-year-old isn’t just a 10-year-old with six years more experience. The significant changes in their thinking means that their brains are able to approach problems in new ways which allows them to challenge the old ways of doing things and come up with often amazing innovative solutions.

It’s important as parents that we make room for these natural changes to happen to our adolescence. Our teenagers will push away from us but that does not mean they don’t need us.  By understanding what is driving these changes we can view their behaviour through a different, more accurate lens, which will lead to more compassion and understanding…. at least some of the time! This is hard, it is hard for us and it is hard for them.  But it is also a period in time and if we can celebrate the amazing stuff, tolerate the trickier stuff and come out the other side with our relationship intact we have done a good enough job.  

(If you would like to share this information with your teenager I have also written a teenage friendly version in my blog 😊)