The most important thing to understand about teens and tweens is that the brain's pre-frontal cortex is not fully developed until approximately age 23. This part of the brain is responsible for executive functioning, which includes:
- Understanding and thinking about cause and effect
- Understanding short and long-term consequences for current decisions/actions
- Planning for the distant future (more than 3-6 months from now)
- Patience and delayed satisfaction: willing to take small steps now toward a larger goal later
Since teens and tweens have an incomplete pre-frontal cortex, they operate primarily from emotion and tend to pursue things that will give immediate satisfaction. There are four main issues associated with teens and young adults acting/reacting primarily from emotion:
Fight, Flight, or Freeze: Once a teen or tween becomes emotionally charged, all remaining logical thought processes discontinue. This makes it difficult for the emotionally charged person to stop, label the emotion, and recognize the underlying cause. Instead, the person is infused with adrenaline, causing the person to immediately react emotionally with a "teen tantrum" (yelling, whining, crying, accusing, slamming doors, etc.) or to shut down altogether (go silent, shrug shoulders, unwilling to continue discussion).
Misinterpreting facial expressions: Studies show that, teens and tweens interpret many different facial expressions as anger, even when anger is not being expressed. This may be why some claim, “My teacher hates me,” or why teens react to parental concern as parental "anger". Once a teen has interpreted anger coming from someone, the brain hijacks any remaining logical thought, and the teen reacts as if being attacked.
Social Media: Due to current technology, many teens and tweens primarily socialize electronically and do not have the benefit of face-to-face interaction or even voice-to-voice interaction. This lowers their ability to learn how to correctly label and interpret tone of voice, body language, and facial expressions. A teen or tween will often incorrectly interpret emotional content into written messages and will emotionally react.
All or nothing thinking: Teens and tweens display “all or nothing” thinking. They may view one negative incident as something that "always" happens. Then, without really thinking logically,the teen or tween avoids situations (i.e. parents) that might make them feel negative.
Depending on
how an individual has interpreted his/her experiences, environment, and those
things that have influenced his/her life, the resulting anxiety/restlessness
may manifest differently: Depression, anger, eating problems, cutting, academic
problems, social phobia, conduct problems (stealing, reckless behavior,
destruction of property), rebellion…and a host of other dysfunctional
behaviors.
If talking to your teen hasn't worked very well, or if things "went wrong" a while ago and your teen is beyond the point of listening to you or confiding in you, psychotherapy can help him/her cope with difficult situations, family upheavals, peer pressure, and misinterpretation of what's going on in his/her environment.
