Parent tips on teenage brain development and learning style

Your high school student is under a lot of pressure. We typically expect them to make sound (adult) decisions about their future college and career path, without their adult, decision-making part of the brain fully functioning. As a parent, you have a huge role in easing the pressure and giving them the experiences they need to facilitate healthy brain development, so they have what they need to make mature decisions in the future.

What do repeated experiences do for the brain?

From the time a baby is born until it reaches approximately 25 years of age, with each stage of development, the brain offers a limited but powerful window to create pathways used throughout a person's lifetime. Pathways forge when new experiences are introduced and repeated or practiced. Who we become as an adult depends on the experiences the brain receives when it is developing. Since your student's prefrontal cortex is developing now, he or she must receive the experiences they need during this window of opportunity to help them grow a healthy brain for the future.

What does brain development mean for your student?

The prefrontal cortex is the brain's decision-making part that gives us the ability to plan and think about the consequences of our actions. It also helps us solve problems and control our impulses. In its absence, your student has to rely on the amygdala to make decisions. This part of the brain is associated with emotions, impulses, aggression, and risk-taking behaviors, which is why you might have a student who is dramatic, moody, or irrational.

How can parents help in healthy teen brain development?

During this development time, parents can work on being safe and supportive as their students make amygdala-based decisions. They can also proactively introduce experiences that begin to engage the prefrontal cortex to forge healthy pathways. Additionally, it affords your student to experience the differences in outcome when decisions are made using two different parts of the brain.

Support, don't fix

Parents tend to take over or jump in with advice to prevent their students from failing or making poor choices. When we fix their problems, we rob their brain of the kind of experiences they need to grow an adult brain. Instead, be a safe and supportive person they can come to when needed. Additionally, create a safe place for your student to experience the consequences of their poor choices. In other words, let them pay for their speeding ticket, go to school without their lunch because they slept through their alarm, contact their school counselor to switch classes, make that dreaded phone call to their coach, etc.

Affirm, don't conform

Do you know that one of the most significant opportunities this stage of brain development offers is for your student to become functionally smarter? This is one of the reasons why students need to discover on their own which experiences result in sound as well as poor learning choices.

I'm often saddened to learn that parents have unknowingly wasted precious time during this stage trying to conform their students to their personal learning style. When we put pressure on them to use our learning techniques to study, plan and stay organized, we rob their brains of the opportunity to discover how they can become functionally smarter. Every person has their own unique learning style and as parents, we need to learn how to recognize and affirm it in our students.

You can help them develop their own learning strategies by allowing them to use trial and error to see what yields the best results. Some may prefer to read out loud, while others can shave their learning time in half by being part of a group discussion or by creating elaborate graphics to connect concepts. Some might need the environment to be quiet, while others need white noise in the background. Some may need a clean desk while other a cluttered one. If you want to learn more about this, we offer free learning style consultations.

Suppose we want to raise students who succeed in college and grow up to become independent, responsible adults. In that case, it is crucial to understand, support, and provide what their brain needs during this stage of development.

Parenting a Teen – 4 Ways Empathy Makes a Difference

Growing up is a lot of work!

During each stage of development, kids experience something new physically, socially, emotionally, cognitively, and intellectually. When teenagers begin to make irrational, emotional decisions, parents tend to lose patience and panic. This lends itself to a cycle of parent-teen conflicts at a very critical time in their teen’s life.

One of the most important tools parents need to have to help their teens (and themselves) thrive through the turmoil is a strong sense of empathy.

As teens approach puberty, it’s easy to see the changes unfolding in their body physically but not so in their brain. The emotional center of their brain is more developed than the decision-making part of the brain. This puts their emotions on overdrive and logic in the back seat! Here are a few tips to help you stay focused on what’s important during this time.

Maintain the parent-teen relationship – fight for their heart

While you’re confused and angry about your teen’s behavior, your teen is breaking away from you. You might get the impression that your teen doesn’t need you. Not true! In a rapidly changing world, despite how your teen behaves, he or she longs for parental stability, safety, and belonging. When you’re in the middle of a conflict and emotions are running high, put your empathy hat on. Keep your cool, ask reflective questions, and actively listen. Give them time to cool down. This changes their brain chemistry. Repeat what you heard them say. Make them feel understood. Add humor to your conversations and don’t forget to just have fun. If you want to share a different perceptive and be heard, do it later! You might have to wait a day or two but that’s okay.

Do everything it takes to fight for your teen’s heart and maintain your relationship.

Help your teen stay healthy – body and mind

None of us want to recall how awkward teen years can be. You can develop empathy for your teen by recalling how difficult those years were for you. Over the years, I’ve helped many teens deal with anxiety brought on by surges of change. My goal is to help them identify triggers and regulate their response to them. This reduces the number of chemicals released into the brain from the anxiety. One of the most overlooked aspects of brain chemistry is its need to be watered, fed, emptied, and exercised.

Our ability to think clearly and be creative, alert, and logical is directly impacted by water, food, and sleep intake.

Additionally, exercising during ‘hormone surge years’ can help teens respond less emotionally. Buy your teen a journal and encourage them to dump all their thoughts on paper. This will allow them to sleep more peacefully and respond to situations less emotionally.

Plan risk-taking adventures with your teen - and engage

As they start to develop their own value system, teens begin to think out of the box. They take risks to tangibly discover if what they have been taught about life is true. Risk behaviors make us feel good because our brain releases adrenaline and dopamine.

Here is another opportunity for parents to put on their empathy hat – provide safe risk-taking opportunities and engage with them in the process. This helps your teen discover healthy ways to experience what their brain is craving while avoiding tragic consequences.

Avoid lecturing your teen on the consequences of poor choices. Instead research and share real, poor risk behavior stories to help them think through the consequences.

Parenting a teen requires help - ask for it

While all this change is going on, your teen is expected to make one of the most critical decisions of his or her life. Making college and career choices with their emotional, rather than their logical part of their brain can have negative, life-long consequences. I’ve found that often students make career choices based on a glamorized, rather than a realistic perceptive of that career. Recently one of my clients wanted to become a nurse, though she did not have the aptitude to become one, simply because she wanted to wear scrubs! Some students decide to attend a college based on where their closest friends or significant others are attending.

The simple truth is students need help to avoid making emotional decisions.

The best way to preserve your relationship with them is by asking friends, teachers, and counselors who can empathize with your teen to step in and help them launch into adulthood and all the decisions that come with it.

A great time to start developing empathy and adding it to your parenting tool-kit is now. Helping your teenager in these four ways can make an immeasurable difference. Keep going parents - you can do it!

Kal has spent the last thirty years working with teens developing empathy, good listening, and communication skills to help them navigate college and life decisions. Contact us today to find out how we can help.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Your Changing Teenager & What They Need From You

It happened overnight…twice! It happened once with our daughter Missy and then seven years later with our son Chad. The first time it occurred we were convinced it wasn’t going to happen to us so when it did, we weren’t ready. We expected it the second time around, which paved a way for a different experience.  

All parents reach the point when they wonder who kidnapped their perfectly well behaved and parent-loving child. The shift in parent-child relationship is painful, confusing and often surfaces old pain stored in a parents’ memory. Between the ages of 12 to 18, children experience a crisis that Erik Erickson terms as ‘identity vs. role diffusion’. When younger, children understand that they have no power and that adults do. This allows them to align themselves with those adults as a way to share some of that power and status. Now, they want power for themselves with the same people that they’ve been subordinate to for the first twelve-plus years of their life.  It’s not okay to be someone’s child…they want to be their own person. In an effort to discover who they are, there’s a natural tendency to separate from their parents and seek psychological autonomy.  As parents, it’s important to accept the fact that ‘pulling away’ is totally natural; and to prepare our hearts to live in that tension so we can make the most of what’s happening during this phase.

The power of safe space and natural consequences: During this phase, kids go through the process of self-realization to determine who they’ll be as individuals and ultimately as adults. They begin to show interest in things that are different and often opposite of those of their parents. This gives them the ability to evaluate and measure these new experiences against their familiar childhood lifestyle to help them discern what’s uniquely valuable to them. This time-period of pulling away produces high levels of fear, anxiety and feelings of failure in parents. Though difficult, I had to learn how to disconnect what my children were going through from what I was feeling. Their search for a personal and separate identity was natural but I found myself feeling like a failure when I saw them making choices that didn’t reflect how I’d raised them. Instead of trusting what I had instilled in Missy when she was young, I found myself fighting against the choices she was making and over-controlling her by placing unrealistic rules in place that made her feel un-trusted and punished. Seven years later, Chad had realistic boundaries in place, which gave him a safe environment to process, fail and develop. In Chad’s words, “Missy was a recipient of punishments while I learned lessons from natural consequences (which were often painful) and received little or no punishment.” Teens need a lot of guidance and support but want the freedom to come to their parents rather than receive unsolicited advice. They’re also less likely to rebel against parents when they experience natural and realistic consequences for their actions. Often, Chad intentionally would ask some shocking questions, just to test the waters. Staying calm in the middle of scary conversations offers our children the assurance that we’re not easily disappointed and that we’re committed to them through thick and thin.

The power of community: I fell into what I believe is one of the most costly parenting traps. I bought into the lie that I was the only ‘one’ that my children needed. I’ve come to realize that because of the what ‘identity verse role diffusion’ entails a parent’s voice will become soft during these years which makes it extremely vital for us to intentionally posture other trusting adults who will echo what we believe during these years. Something beautiful happens in the process... our kids learn the value of community. As I watch my adult daughter struggle, I wish I had figured out how to give her what my son had – a community of loving and invested adults who were committed to being present for him. Today, I admire the fact that my son loves community and knows how to be community. He takes the time to build relationships as well as reaches out to others with ease and transparency when he needs support, prayer and advice.  As parents, we need to accept the fact that other adults are essential and are not a threat to our children or us. Before our son hit adolescence we became intentional about being present for other teens. We found ourselves being more patient and understanding with Chad because of our unfolding experiences with those teens.  Now years later, as empty nesters, my husband and I continue to find deep joy and purpose by creating safe places for those that wrestle through these years.

The power of forgiveness and transparency: One day, when my kids were still young, my son challenged me about knowing something with more accuracy than I did. I was 100% confident that I was correct. Well, it turns out that I was wrong. I remember how difficult it was to ask for forgiveness, especially because he laughed at me after I lost the bet. What he didn’t realize is that he triggered a childhood memory that evoked a severe reaction from me. Something that had the potential to be a meaningful memory turned into a nightmare. We forget that our kids have a front row seat into our lives and are absorbing the good, the bad and the ugly of our parenting till they hit the phase. As they try to gain independence and establish their own value system they openly start voicing their opinions about what they’ve experienced thus far. Partly because this is how they gain independence, and mostly because they’re trying to understand why we did what we did to parent them. It’s important to give our children the space to respectfully share their feedback. This might mean hearing some unpleasant things about ourselves, admitting our failures and asking for forgiveness. My husband’s ability to be transparent and ask for forgiveness from our son has had a huge impact on Chad. Now as a young adult, Chad finds himself modeling the same thing with his friends and co-workers.
We also need to be mindful of our own triggers that impact how we parent through this phase. I saw myself in my daughter’s behavior and that stirred up a lot of pain that I had shelved. Her behavior caused me to project my own rebellious and regretful history into Missy’s future and I assumed that she’d repeat my mistakes. I did her a disservice by failing to separate my experience from hers. I began to parent her with fear instead of using it as an opportunity to be transparent about my own poor choices and the regret it brought me. It was about her and I made it about me.

Parenting is not easy. By anticipating and preparing our hearts for the unique tensions that exists during adolescence, we can confidently help our children and others, navigate their pursuit for an independent identity that reflects the values we hold close to our hearts.

15 Ways to Help Your Teen Grow A Healthy Brain

They’re needy and dramatic!
They’re highly emotional and hard to understand!
They’re fighting for independence while craving love and care.

This narrative might sound like one of a toddler but it’s also true of your teen. The brain goes through one of the most dramatic growth spurts during both these stages. Brain development suggests that raging hormones, voice changes and hair growth aren’t the only changes responsible for your teen’s crazy behavior.

As our children become teenagers the brain goes through a pruning process to get rid of the unused connections while strengthening other connections. This remodeling process begins in the back of the brain while the prefrontal cortex is remodeled last and continues into adulthood. Since the prefrontal cortex is the decision-making part of the brain responsible for your child’s ability to plan and think about the consequences of actions, solve problems and control impulses it has a huge impact on how your teen behaves.

How can you help your teen carry a healthy brain into adulthood?

1. Don’t freak out. It’s easy to panic when you watch your teens   behave differently then how you’ve raised them. Your teen is God’s masterpiece in progress and we need to parent with faith rather than fear. 
2.  Become a student. This phase brings unique opportunities to shape your teen’s thinking and processing skills. Instead of getting frustrated learn who they are and train them in the way they should go to spur on positive changes.
3. Be patient. Because of the pruning process you will hear yourself repeating instructions. Your teen needs you to patiently parent differently.
4. Clue them in. You might wonder who replaced your perfectly calm and rational thinking child with an overly dramatic, emotional, impulsive and aggressive child! Because the prefrontal cortex is still developing, teenagers might rely on a part of the brain called the amygdala to make decisions and solve problems more than adults do. The amygdala is associated with emotions, impulses, aggression and instinctive behavior. Be ready to be misunderstood as well as expect a display of intense emotions and drama. This too shall pass, as they say. Help your teen understand what’s going on in their brain and how it impacts them an others, but don’t let them use it as an excuse.
5. Introduce new thinking skills. The brain becomes more interconnected and gains processing power during these years. They have the potential to gain adult decision making skills but they need access to information. However, during these years their decision-making can be overly influenced by emotions because their brain relies more on the emotional seat of the brain because the rational part of the brain is under construction. Don’t box your teen in and tell them what to do. Instead, give them a wide range of reasoning skills so they can establish their own way of thinking. Ask for a list of options, talk through decisions step by step, and ask about possible courses of action and potential consequences. Encourage them to weigh positive rewards against negative ones.
6. Their activities matter. Teens are driven to establish a sense of purpose. Repeated skills, activities and habits during these years make connections and have the potential to become ‘hard wired’ in the brain. Give them space to explore new activities. Once they discover what they like, help them build positive character traits and a sense of purpose by routinely engaging them in those activities.
7. Help them take healthy risks. Your teen is wired to not only take risks, but higher ones. Teach them how to take healthy risks, like traveling and sports rather then negative ones like smoking and stealing. Teach them to measure risks and be available when they experience setbacks and failure. And speaking of failure; it’s ok to let your teens fail at things. In fact, they need to learn how to fail, and learn from their mistakes.
8. New emotional outlets. Hormones and brain construction make teens overly emotional. Help them find new and creative ways to learn self-control as well as release and express their emotions. Some good outlets include sports, creative arts, music and writing.
9. Set boundaries. Your teen needs boundaries to feel safe and loved but the boundaries you set need to make sense in light of ‘today’ and align with their personal beliefs. They’re interested in the now, not the future. Give them opportunities to negotiate (not argue) boundaries to increase their processing skills.
10. Help them get lots of sleep. They love staying up but teens need an average of 9 hours of sleep for healthy brain development. Teach them how to wind down and relax.
11. Family routine. Teens might be busy but they still need family structure. Ignore their eye rolling, don’t give them an out and continue to engage in weekly family routines like meals, walks, family nights, outings, etc. 
12. Model It. Are you modeling choices, emotions and thinking processes that you want your teen to learn? Also. in the heat of the moment you'll often find yourself mirroring the same behaviors you're trying to correct in your teen. Does your response and emotions to their drama model what you want them to catch?  
13. Affection. Often parents tend to change how they show physical affection to their children as they enter puberty. Teens need to know that their parents still love them, especially through all the changes. Find ways to physically and verbally express love.
14. Give frequent affirmation. Words have power. You might feel like you’re living in a constant battle zone where your own affirmation is sparse. Their brain needs frequent positive affirmation (and rewards) to reinforce healthy pathways in the brain, and for life.
15. Engage your village. It takes a village to raise kids. Your voice might become soft during these years. Invite other adults you trust to model and actively engage in your teen's life. Invite them over and create regular opportunities for them to connect.

Photo by Matt Heaton on Unsplash