Do you have a teenager at home? I have a 12-year-old who’s acting more and more like one. She is moody, less willing to go out with us, but becomes wild and silly when she’s with her best friend. It is sometimes frustrating and challenging living with her, yet rewarding and fun at other times.
I recently read a book, Brainstorm, by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, and gained some insights into the developing brain and mind of adolescent years. It helps me adjust my way and attitude when interacting with my preteen daughter. I’ll share some of my learning with you in the following paragraphs,
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that drives us for rewards. During adolescent years, the baseline level of dopamine is lower but its release after stimulating experiences or food is much higher. That is why teenagers often seem bored and seek to be engaged in some thrilling and new activities.
This change in dopamine level and amount makes the teenagers more susceptible to addiction because addictive substance such as alcohol, drugs, and even sugar, often involves the release of and the level of dopamine. Think about caffeine or sugar. As we are drinking coffee or eating a piece of cake, we feel happy and excited. After a period of time, when the effect wears off, we feel down and want to drink/eat more to get back to the “high”. This is very similar to the mechanism of alcohol/drug addiction.
Another characteristic of adolescent called, hyperrationality, often renders the type of advice such as, “just don’t do it” useless. The teenagers often know the pros and cons of a behavior and are usually rational about it. Yet, when they are evaluating those pros and cons, they put too much weight on pros and frequently feel the risk is worth taking. They need to learn to see the big picture, to trust their gut feelings. Dr. Siegel gave an example of public health advocates’ efforts in using hyperrationality to promote anti smoking campaign. Instead of providing medical information and scary images of how smoking destroy your health, it’s more effective to teach the teens to recognize how the cigarettes companies profit by brainwashing them and getting them hooked on smoking. You are appealing to the teens’ preference over “defiance” (against the adults in the cigarettes companies) and using it to their advantage in this case.
In addition to information on brain development, Dr. Siegel also examines the attachment models that we establish with our parents and/or other significant adults and how that impacts our future relationship with others and ourselves. What I like best, though, is that he provides detailed instructions on how to develop what he calls, “Mindsight Tools”. These are daily practices that you could do to improve your insight into yourself and your empathy to others, to integrate all our learning and to better all our relationships, including the ones with your teenage children.
Have you read Brainstorm? If not, check out the book from your local library and start reading!
