Teenagers are quick to press that they are young adults and should be treated as such. That has some validity with older kids, but younger teens are simply not young adults. When you’re in the midst of your eighth free-fall plunge in three weeks, this time because he didn’t get the part he wanted in the school play or she found out an unflattering picture was posted on someone’s Facebook page, I understand the draw, the temptation, for weary parents to want to see the adult light at the end of the teen tunnel prematurely. I understand you can be more than ready for that loopy, impulsive, irresponsible kid to morph into a mature, thoughtful, levelheaded, and, yes, self-reliant adult. Now, please.
Not so fast. Teenagers still have a great deal of growing and developing to do. We’ll talk about this more a little later on in the book, but, for now, I’d like you to realize that your son or your daughter is not merely a young adult, held back from realizing true adulthood because of a few years of experience or the receipt of a high school diploma. There’s more to it than that, as medical research is finding out. If childhood is a time defined by development, then adolescence is still part of childhood because the adolescent brain is in a phase of intense development. A teen brain is not an adult brain.
In the world of research, there is a fascinating technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It’s a process that tracks brain activity by monitoring changes in blood flow. The fMRI process shows which different parts of the brain sort of “light up” when activities stimulate use. Through fMRI, you can see how and where the brain is affected by doing all kinds of tasks. With multiple fMRI images, taken from different angles, researchers can actually create a dimensional image of the brain and watch it react and light up. It’s really a fascinating science, and it’s helped to provided answers to a variety of puzzling questions.
Given the way people have scratched their own heads over the behavior of adolescents, it seems logical that someone, somewhere, would decide to hook up a bunch of teenagers to fMRI and watch what happens. What researchers found was interesting and instructive. I’m not going to get too technical here, but it appears from this study that there is a marked difference between how teenagers and young adults use their brains. When young adults (for this study defined as those between the ages of twenty-three and thirty) and teenagers were asked to perform the same tasks, different parts of the brain were activated.
Young adults show changes in the area of their brains used for what are called “executive” functions, like cognitive processing, planning, impulse control, and reasoning. Teenage brains are still developing in that area and tend to make decisions using the part of the brain associated with fear and “gut” reactions. I especially like the final sentence of this article: “While these studies have shown remarkable changes that occur in the brain during the teen years, they also demonstrate what every parent can confirm: the teenage brain is a very complicated and dynamic arena, one that is not easily understood.” To which I say, “Amen.”
The bottom line, for you as a parent, is to recognize that your teenager is not a young adult but a teenage child, one who is still developing the ability to think and respond rather than simply react. Apparently, researchers could see that around age eleven in girls and around age twelve in boys, mirroring the onset of puberty, preteens’ brains got an extra download, if you will, of the type of matter needed to grow and mature in the “executive” functioning part of the brain. However, just because they had the functional capacity to grow in this area, they need the time and experience to learn to use and solidify these new concoctions. Teens are risky and reactionary, not because they’re trying intentionally to push your buttons and make your life miserable, but because those high-reasoning areas of the brain are still developing and will continue to do so into their early twenties.
Researchers at the National Institutes of Mental Health did a study with teenagers and young adults with what they called a “game of chance.” Players could choose either a high-risk or a low-risk option. The low-risk option had less reward buy greater chance of winning. The high-risk option had greater reward with lower chance of winning. When teens decided which option to choose, they tended to use the reactionary, gut-feeling part of the brain. When young adults decided which option to choose, they tended to use the reasoning area part of the brain.
Your teenager may be physically bigger than you, may appear mature, and may feel as ready to be an adult as you are ready to hand over the reins of parenting, but you need to continue being the parent for a few years longer. There’s still a lot going on inside, and you’ve still got an important role to play in protecting and guiding your teenagers into adulthood.
The above is excerpted from Chapter 3 of my new book, The Stranger in Your House. I’ll be posting more excerpts from it here in the weeks to come, but you can receive a FREE copy of the book itself between now and December 15, 2011. To participate in this book giveaway, simply share some of your own thoughts or experiences about raising teenagers – in the comments section of this or future blog posts about the book.