 Remember doing the craziest things you could think of like
jumping off a roof in the dark, or stealing your parents' car for a joy ride
when they were out? If you do, then it was not really that unusual for your
teen or young adult brain to think that way. I was a perfect angel during my
teen years and I never got into any trouble or did anything crazy.
Brain scientists, (I love that word) have indicated that the
frontal lobe of the brain is the last part of the brain to develop. The frontal
lobe is said to be fully developed by age 25. It controls higher reasoning and
logic related to behavior. Look at most of the extreme games type athletes that
race a 16 inch wheeled bike down a vertical ramp 50 feet in length and then
launch over a 75 foot gap while upside down scratching their ass. They must be
crazy or something because I have seen the footage of how it looks facing down
that ramp. My broken older body and developed brain scream danger at me. It’s
not just close your eyes and go for it. It’s open your eyes wide and get off on
the rush of adrenaline that courses through the undeveloped brain. My developed
brain will release adrenaline also, but it’s more like the kind of adrenaline
you feel when you look in your rear view mirror to see flashing police lights.
It’s all hormones
that the brain releases, but when you are younger, in the less developed
frontal lobe category, you are more willing and eager to take chances. A recent
trip to an amusement park with a killer ride that creates zero gravity resulted
in a pulled muscle in my leg because I completely tensed up during the
outrageous drop. You know that tightened muscle in your foot that requires you
to stand up and jump around to fix it? That’s what I had going on in my leg,
but being strapped in like my old straight jacket prevented me from stretching
it out and for a few days after the fun ride, I walked like an 80 year old man.
My son on the other hand did what I remembered doing as a kid. He put his hands
up over his head, bugged his eyes out of their sockets and let out a raging
primal scream. I could swear I heard some little girls screaming on the way
down and they sounded nothing like me. When it was all over, I realized there
were no girls on the ride and I asked my son if he heard the girls screaming.
He said, “Dad, there were no girls screaming on the ride. It was you that was
screaming like a girl.”
Where does this leave a parent of a teen when the parent is
not that far removed from the teen years? Many of us remember the teen years as
being turbulent, but in retrospect, I have faced way more challenging
situations and emotions as an adult than I ever did as a teen. Stereotypes
about the teen years say that basically teens are these crazed people that are
facing raging hormones and mean kids at school and too much homework. Most
adults face raging hormones and the added stresses of adult life and run around
in a more sophisticatedly crazy way than teens.It feels like a big deal when
you are going through it but, think about it, as a teen, you open your drawer
and the clean clothes are all folded and organized, you get a nice home cooked
meal every day, you get chauffeured around everywhere, and you have no bills or
responsibilities. Most of us would like to still have our lives like that. The
real problem with teens is that they are really revolting against having to be
“more responsible.” They want you to think they are independent and
all-knowing, but the truth is that they are still little kids with a bigger
kids’ body and they don’t want to grow up.
Many adults will agree that keeping their kids is a good
thing. Sometimes the way they act or the things they say may challenge you to
not give them up for scientific research or to kick them out. Research
indicates that spending time and being consistently involved will benefit the
child in the long term because they will learn from your developed thinking.
Your job is like a heart bypass machine. The kids’ brain is not capable of the
higher thinking you may desire for them to demonstrate. You have to be an
auxiliary frontal lobe for them. I explained to my 13 year old son that he is
responsible for what he says and does, but that my expectations from him are
only that I expect him to act like a jerk sometimes because he can’t help it. I
told him that 2 year old kids and babies crap in their diapers because they
don’t know any better and thinking a teenager will act like an adult is the
same thing.
It’s quite possible that the time you get with your child will
determine how they face the world. If you are able to smile and have some fun
with them, they will remember that more than when you tell them they are
grounded, to do their homework, or take a shower.
I went into my counselors’
office for my first visit wrapped in saran wrap. The first thing he said to me
was, “I can see your nuts.”
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