Clever Children: Dumb Teenagers

OH MY GAWD, my son is officially a teenager and he didn’t come with instructions or a remote. Now I’m learning the ABC’s of living with a teenager: A is for Argumentative; B is for Belligerent; C is for Cranky; D is for Defiant; E is for Electronics; F is for Frustrating; G is for Grasping; H is for Hormones; I is for Irrational etc. (sigh). I feel a bit better.

When I was a teenager, my mother would point to the gray in her hair and say, “see this? These are the ones you gave me and these are the ones
your brother made.” Poor mom. Poor me.

Payback’s a B****! She would be laughing at me now. That dreaded mother’s curse extracts its revenge. You know the one or at least some variation, “I hope you have a kid just like you and they treat you like you treat me!photo courtesy of jj_judes

Dealing with teens in a biological family is never easy. Dealing with teens who are not biologically yours is even more confrontational difficult emotional like an extreme mental sports challenge so intense that blood vessels in your eyes burst. Okay I might be exaggerating a bit, but just a tad.

When you’ve had them from birth you know the buttons you can push to get their compliance or a least some semblance of it. Being the mother that came years later, well, you’re not given access to those buttons and you might not have had enough time to create buttons of your own. Dang it!

In search of answers for my personal dilemma I did some research and found that teens really are crazy by design (the brilliant chapter title from Barbara Strauch’s book ‘The Primal Teen’). And we need to look to their cognitive and emotional development for answers. Therefore, if you’ve been thinking that your clever child turned into a stupid teen, you’re right. Teens lose gray matter each year from ages 13 through 18.

In support of my opinion, there is research showing adolescent brains undergo profound changes. And these changes make the teen years as critical in the brain’s development as your child’s first three years.

A baby’s brain over-produces brain cells and the connections between them. Then the brain starts pruning them back around age 3. Just in time for the terrible two’s and troublesome three’s?

According to a study by Dr. Jay Giedd at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., the formation of synapse showed a growth spurt in the frontal cortex just before puberty (age 11 for girls, age 12 for boys) and then the cutting back stage begins in adolescence. When the teen brain begins maturing between 13 and 18, they will lose 1 percent of their gray matter every year. If you want to read further on this process go to Frontline, Inside the Teenage Brain.

Maybe my little guy’s bio-mom had ulterior motives for finally giving his dad custody. R is for Ridiculous, S is for Stupid, T is definitely for Tylenol® EXTRA strength.