Why Does Growing Up Have To Suck: Part 3

This will be our final installment of the "Growing Up Sucks" series. As I mentioned before, we are going to look at the affects of alcohol on the teenage brain, and also their emotions.

I think it would be hard to find a teenager these days who hasn't tried alcohol in some form. The studies in this report aren't dealing with teenagers who have just "tried" alcohol, these studies are about teens who have abused alcohol. It doesn't say what they drank, or how much. It just said they abused it. Their research shows that alcohol affects teens differently than adults. This makes sense considering, MRI studies have shown their brains are still developing. A study in 2000 showed, even weeks after they quit drinking, fifteen and sixteen year olds still had problems with, memory, judgement and reasoning. Not only do they react differently to the immediate affects of alcohol, the research shows that teens who frequently use alcohol have problems later on in life also.

When it comes teens and their emotions, what is interesting is, that a teens ability to read the facial expressions of others differs from adults also. McLean Hospital in Boston did a study of teenagers between the ages of eleven and seventeen. The teens had their brains scanned and were shown pictures of people wearing fearful expressions. Those under the age of fourteen, saw the expressions as anger, sadness, or confusion instead of fear. Therefore, we can't just assume they understand when other people are afraid, or sad, just by the look on their faces like adults can.

When talking to a teenager, we usually expect them to be able to understand what we're talking about, and it can be very frustrating when they don't. Now that we know there is something going on in their brain that is causing them to not understand, it helps us as adults to realize that we're going to need to take more time with them, and explain ourselves more clearly. I guess, when we see that blank look on their faces, we'll know the wires are still connecting on that topic, and that will be one area that is going to require a little more patience.

This has really been an interesting topic to research, thanks for pursuing our teenagers brains with me.

Paul

Why Does Growing Up Have To Suck: Part 2

Well if you’re back to read more about teenage brain development, that must mean you’re not easily frightened. If you haven’t read “Why Does Growing Up Have To Suck” you may want to go read that first, that will give you a little insight to why I decided to write about this.
Drs. at the National Institute Of Mental Health have determined that the human brain doesn’t stop maturing at age ten, as once believed. They have found that our brain continues to mature sometimes into our twenties. We actually get a second wave of overproduction during this time, something that they previously thought only happened at eighteen months of age.
Following this overproduction we go through a pruning process. During this process, connections among neurons that are not used, wither away, while others that are used more often are strengthened. It’s the brains way of eliminating all the clutter collected during the over production process.
If you’ve ever listened to teenagers talk, it’s probably pretty hard to understand them. Just yesterday, my son was talking so fast a few times I had to ask him to repeat himself so I could understand what he said. Not only do they talk fast, but they have so many things they are thinking about at any given time it’s hard to keep up with which topic they’re on.
The good news about these findings is, 1st) it helps us as parents realize there is actually something physical going on inside their heads that they really can’t control. 2nd) There is a part of the process they can control. That is the process of what neurons they are going to keep. If they lean more towards art, music, sports, engineering, being a doctor, or lawyer, we as parents can help guide or encourage them in that direction. Taking into consideration, that what we would like for them to do with their lives may not be what they would choose. A lot of times their choice may be genetic, like the families where there are generations of doctors, or military families, but sometimes there will be those that will break the cycle. They have a different agenda for themselves, and I believe that we as parents will be disappointed if we try to force them to follow a path they don’t want to go down. They may or may not succeed. If they don’t succeed they could see themselves as a failure. If they do succeed, but aren’t doing what they love then they will be miserable. (check out my blog post “Dreams”.)
As I said at the beginning of part one, I’m one of those people who likes to try to figure out what makes other people tick. As parents you try to figure out what your kids are good at, and lead them in that direction. For example buying my son a guitar. He like it for a while, then he put it on the back burner for a while. When he started playing it again he said he didn’t know why he stopped, he remembered how fun it is. Now he has been playing hours every day and writing songs as well, not because he is being made to practice, but because he has decided he likes it.
As parents, it’s also hard to know when to discourage them from making a decision. I was just thinking about what professional skateboarder Tony Hawks parents must have been thinking when he told them he was going to ride a skateboard for a living. I would have like to have been in on that conversation. Now, he has skateboarding video games. I guess doing what you love is the key. I know it sounds cliche’, but success really isn’t measured financially. What good is being rich is you’re miserable.
I know there are some teenagers who don’t drink alcohol, but I think they are probably the minority. Next time we’ll look at the affects of alcohol on the teenage brain, and teens dealing with emotions.
Thanks again for your bravery of attempting to understand our teenagers,
Paul

Why Does Growing Up Have To Suck? Part 1

I’ve always been the kind of person who likes to know what makes people tick. I like to people watch, and try to figure out what kind of person they are. I often wonder what is going on in people’s heads. Yes I probably should have been a shrink. I did consider biblical counselling at one time, but decided it just wasn’t my nature to try to juggle work and school. So now I research things as the need arises. Last weekend brought about one of those needs.
My thirteen year old son had one of his first traumatic adolescent experiences. Without embarrassing him by publishing his life on the internet, lets just say it revolved around a girl. As I’m sure we can all relate, relationships are among hardest things to figure out. The phrase that comes to mind is “can’t live with them can’t live without them.” Male or female, I’m sure you’ve thought that at some point. I am so thankful my son has music as a way to vent. Song writers are probably the ones we hear about most that tell about their lives. They tell their stories in their music. His mother and I encouraged him to write a song about what happened, and were willing to accept anything he wrote, and any language he used. I don’t believe you should censor someone who is trying to come to terms with their feelings. I mean let’s face it, sometimes “gosh darn it” just doesn’t cut it.
Well, since I haven’t been able to get this out of my head all week, I decided to do a little research on adolescents and why does growing up have to suck so bad. I found a web site called act for youth. Here is the actual article I found. www.actforyouth.net/resources/rf/rf_brain_0502.pdf I don’t know if anyone will ever be able to answer that question, but hopefully we’ll be able to find some answers, and help ease our kids’ pain a little.
We’ll break the article down a little at a time. Understanding that this article was written ten years ago, I haven’t seen anything more current in my search.
When we adopted our children, and thinking that there could be some issues we would have to deal with, it was interesting to learn how a baby’s brain develops. There is so much stimulation it needs during the first few years to get everything wired correctly. Now this article says that the National Institute Of Mental Health has found through MRI’s, the brain of teenagers is still a work in progress. They used to think that the wiring of the brain was finished by three or four years old, and fully mature by ten or twelve. Their new findings(ten years ago)show that the greatest changes to the parts of the brain that are responsible for self control, judgement, emotions and organization, occur between puberty and adulthood. I guess this explains why we see teenagers making some very poor decisions. Their wiring is still trying to connect.
So the next time our teenagers make a wrong decision, or freak out over a friend or relationship in trouble, just remember, it’s not that they have a screw loose, it is probably a loose, or unconnected wire. With a little guidance, hopefully we can get those wires connected properly. That doesn’t mean they still aren’t going to be mad at us, because this wiring process also controls the emotional outburst part of the brain.
That was just the first paragraph of the article. We’ll look at more later, but I think this is a very interesting start.
Thanks for being brave enough to delve in the teenage brain with me.
Paul