What were you thinking?

I used to teach human development to Rangatahi who were starting to train as nurses or midwives and the one thing that I remember to this day is the phase that adolescents go through called - invincibility. This is where a young person has the perception that nothing negative is going to happen to them...

At that time I didn't have children and couldn't fathom what would make an otherwise normal human being all of a sudden assume the role of superman and transformer all at once. Several years later, I'm writing as a mother of two little super transformers that I pray will reach 25 years old and out of this phase ;-)

Anyway, recently, I have been reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers by Nigel Latta and for the first time ever, someone actually explains what happens inside a young persons brain and after reading it - I felt a little bit better, still nervous and anxious, but better...

FACT ONE The brain is still developing in a teenager. I had always believed that the first three years were most important and anything past that was a bonus, but basically it was a done deal…. According to research, and Nigel Latta – the teenage brain is different from a child and an adult and in fact the changes that occur to the brain during this time are some of the most dramatic and important changes over the human lifespan.

FACT TWO The pre-frontal cortex is the last to develop. The part of the brain that is described as being the seat of reason is called the pre-frontal cortex. “This part of the brain is involved in such things as learning rules, understanding consequences, working memory, and how we make sense of emotions”. There seems to be a sudden increase of activity in this region which peaks at about 11 ye ars old for girls and later for boys…

FACT THREE Changes in the reward centre of a teenager's brain makes them prone to seek out the 'buzz' or short-term, risky activities. Because of this, teenagers seek out those things rather than focus on things that have long-term gain. According to research, this desire for this 'buzz' like feeling increases when they are around others of the same age. Latta writes about an experiment that had teenagers put in an MRI scanner and asked to do a simple task and watched the lights go off however, when the teenagers were told that  they were being watched by other teenagers, the screens light up like fireworks.... Parents know that  that when teenagers are with their friends they will take unnecessary risks - now nueroscience proves it.

FACT FOUR The wiring in the brain isn't fully insulated by the myelin sheeth until in the early twenties. This decreases the speed and efficiency of thinking. Latta compares this to a computer when he says that "whilst adults have the equivalent of high-speed connections between the left and right side of their brains, teenages are still working on the uninsulated dial-up version. Whilst we can point and click at mental web pages which load pretty much instantly, teenagers have to spend a bit longer wiating for the site to load before they can make a decision".

FACT FIVE Teenages can make good decisions in theory (such as not to swim with sharks), but it take them longer than adults to reach those decisions and they use different parts of their brain to do it. MRI scans showed that although when the same scenario is presented to adults and teenagers the decisions were the same - different parts of the brains were used. The adults were able to summon up the end 'picture' and made decisions immediately based on that outcome. Whereas it appears that teenagers break things down and go through each scenario and depend on rationalisation.... For me the most crucial bit of this is that teenagers can make good decisions - and I'm holding on to that ;-)

So you see - there is more to a teenager's brain than many of us knew and does it make a difference? For me it 1)explains how my sons are thinking and hopefully I am reminded that how I got to my decisions and thinking process won't even be close to theirs, and 2) I will also try to remember that my decisions are based on my life - and theirs is still being formulated.

Mr Latta may know what he is talking about but for me - the most important thing I got going for me is the faith that how I have raised my sons - will count for something ;-).

Yours in friendship,

Mxo