Your Teenager Is Not Crazy

by Jerusha Clark

  Focus on self-control, not scare techniques. As we’ve emphasized, modifying a teen’s circumstances is a better choice than trying to simply “educate” him or her out of risky behaviors, especially if you’re prone to panicking and trying to “freak your teen out” of doing wrong. Humans first learn self-control by being controlled; this is an important facet of childhood learning. Your teen, however, is leaving childhood and must begin to regulate him- or herself. This is part of God’s design for maturity. It’s essential that you not leave teens unsupervised for long periods of time; it’s also crucial that you resist micromanaging what they do with their “space.” Teens respond best to aiming for something rather than simply inhibiting a behavior through threats or fear. Focus your conversation and activities on the positive outcomes of impulse control (e.g., greater financial stability, relational peace, more opportunities now and in the future) to motivate wise choices.

  Dig deeper. Parents often deal with risk-taking and recklessness on a surface level, addressing the behavior and applying a consequence. We encourage you, through observation and open-ended questions, to practice discernment and dig deeper. While getting below the surface will not be necessary every time, significant heart issues are behind some impulsive decisions. Risky sexual experimentation, for instance, may point back to a deep loneliness or sense of rejection.

  As an example of how to dig deeper, let’s consider the adolescent phenomenon of “partying.” Parents sometimes dismiss this behavior with a “teens will be teens” mentality. Some believe it’s not that dangerous for teens to drink, as long as they don’t drive. Others go so far as to purchase alcohol for their teen’s group of friends and provide a supposed safe place for experimentation. It’s essential that parents be aware of the risks of their own attitudes and choices in instances like this. Here’s an example of how digging deeper may influence a parent’s and a teen’s mind.

  Surface behavior: teens take risks and experiment with alcohol.

  Surface parent reaction: lectures, grounding, preventing teen from going to parties and being with friends who drink, etc.

  Deeper truth #1: Partying is about more than alcohol. With even limited exposure to pop culture, you’ll find that teens view parties as integral to adolescent life. Most media-portrayed parties include alcohol and/or drugs, and—regardless of whether condemning or condoning underage drinking—they also imply that alcohol creates shared memories and solidifies community. In other words, partying is about a longing for experience, connection, and ritual, not just drunkenness. If we’re to understand teenagers’ partying, we cannot focus only on alcohol or other substance use. Teens recount (and thereby relive) stories of “partying” as a social narrative that unites their group with a shared history. Digging deeper can help parents see the importance of communal experience and encourage us to facilitate opportunities for teenagers to “party” without alcohol.

  Deeper truth #2: Partying with alcohol and other substances is particularly dangerous for teens. Despite what some adolescents and their parents believe, drinking (and recreational drug use, including smoking marijuana) during the teen years is not a harmless rite of passage. On the contrary, the highly charged reward system and under-construction executive functions of the teen brain leave it incredibly susceptible to the dangers of substance use. Alcohol and other drugs flood the brain’s reward system with high levels of dopamine. Remember, the brain’s reward system “keeps score” with dopamine, reinforcing behaviors that lead to pleasure. Drugs and alcohol throw off the score-keeping, big-time. The teenage brain, revved up and rearing for reward, is highly vulnerable to chemical influence and quickly becomes accustomed to drug-elevated levels of dopamine.5 Sadly, the “highs” experienced with substance use become a standard unattainable through the normal joys of daily life. Researchers have also discovered that young people who drink five or more alcoholic beverages a couple times a week (think parties on Friday and Saturday) lose a significant amount of myelin, the “white” brain matter associated with neural integration as well as attention, decision-making, judgment, self-control, and memory. Tragically, these impairments persist into adulthood.6

  As you can see, digging deeper into the “party” mindset is important because it can help parents determine how to maximize the desire for communal celebration and shared memory while operating on accurate information about how substances impact the adolescent mind. Experimentation shouldn’t be dismissed or ignored. The consequences are too far-reaching. More information is available in Appendix A, “The Truth about Substance Use.” Regardless of whether you believe your teen abuses substances, please don’t skip this important section.

  Faith 101

  Happily, research indicates that teenagers’ risk-taking behavior can yield positive results, benefits that can balance the potential perils. One huge plus is that teens, who lack adult-brain wiring (i.e., inhibition) and generally act more impulsively, discover natural limits in the world around them. Think of it this way: when children learn to walk, they take quite a few tumbles. Scrapes and bruises abound. As much as we’d all like to protect our children from this (or, in teenage terms, the consequences of risky behaviors), they learn from experience.

  The Bible teaches that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). In other words, we can trust God to use our children’s boundary-testing and independence-establishing risks, even their mistakes, for his good purposes. Please don’t misunderstand us; we’re not urging you to step back and allow your kid to go off the deep end and make life-altering mistakes so that God can show up and patch everything back together.

  We are called to counsel and guide, spurring our teens on in love and good deeds, instructing them in the ways of the Spirit, and intervening in dangerous situations. This is part of our God-ordained responsibility. Another part is stepping back so that our adolescents can learn, even from failures. No good parents want their teen to fail; indeed, we do pretty much everything to prevent it. We also know, however, that in our own lives, failures teach powerful lessons. Taking risks sometimes leads to failure, but failure is never the end of the story with God. On the contrary, in God’s hands, risk-taking and the potential mistakes that come with it are opportunities.

  When it comes to risk-taking, we encourage you to focus on discipling your teen even more than disciplining. Discipling your teen means buying up every opportunity that comes with risk-taking behavior, using it to point out God at work. Just as Jesus did with his disicples, tell stories that direct your teen’s attention to God. With parables that wove deep truth and daily life lessons together, Jesus was a master subversive teacher. Such “spiritual storytelling” is effective with teens, who are drawn by narrative and no longer interested in “this is just how it is,” concrete reasoning.

  While seeking to disciple your teen, keep in mind that the more you fulfill your own role as a disciple of Christ, the better your teen will see how to grow in relationship with him. Discipling involves, for instance, consistent, focused prayer, just as Jesus modeled with his disciples; the Gospel accounts reveal that Jesus often stole away to pray intently. Does your teen know you pray?

  Discipling is about preparing teens for adulthood, when they’ll have to learn from their own mistakes by the grace of God. It’s far easier to want to discipline our teens out of risk-taking behaviors, but that is a shortsighted goal; discipleship is for life.

  Your teen’s desire for risk and adventure is a simultaneous invitation for you to trust in God’s goodness to work all things together for good and also to press into discipling rather than simply disciplining. God wired the brain to go through these astounding changes so that teens can learn, even from mistakes. He also ordained that parents would be required to grow and change in the process. It’s marvelous, though yes, it’s also sometimes maddening!

  Try It Today: Practice Negotiation

  Even if you’ve already established a curfew, disc
ussing it with your teen is a great way to include him or her in the process of forethought, planning, and judgment, skills that aren’t hard-wired into the adolescent brain and thus benefit from practice. When we help teens use their prefrontal cortexes in this way, we help them create neurobiological, psychological, and spiritual changes. It’s an all-around win.

  Note: it’s important that you actually negotiate, not unilaterally “lay down the law.” Ask your teen what seems reasonable. Listen. Ask follow-up questions. Agree on a time frame to think about it, then reconvene to discuss. Remember to adjust as your teen ages and shows greater responsibility.

  Apart from helping integrate your teen’s executive functioning, there are four specific benefits of negotiating a curfew in light of potential risk-taking behavior:

  Crazy impulses can become scheduling impossibilities when you have to be home by a certain time.

  If peer pressure is a factor, curfew can be an excuse for your teen (e.g., “Thanks for the invite. Midnight spear fishing could be fun, but my parents expect me home by . . .”).

  Because sleep deprivation impacts a teen’s impulse control, establishing a curfew promotes at least some regulation of sleep patterns.

  If curfew is broken, you can use the “time and a half” rule to curb inappropriate behavior. With this, your teen “owes” you time (i.e., has to come in early) the next time he or she wants to go out. It can be a great motivating force.7

  7

  What Do You Want Me to Say?

  I (Jeramy) sit down at the dinner table after a twelve-hour workday. I’m 100 percent interested in my family and want to know what’s going on in their lives. I’m also 100 percent exhausted and don’t feel like prying stories out of my teenage daughters. How can they answer everything with three or fewer words?

  “What happened at school today?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you learn anything new?”

  “It was school.”

  “Can you tell me something about your day?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I try a different tactic. “Let’s play the high/low game” (where every person in the family shares a highlight and low point in their day).

  As if on cue, both of my articulate, intelligent daughters are dumbstruck.

  I’m worn down; it all feels like too much work. At the same time, there’s an internal battle brewing within me. I used to know pretty much everything that happened in their lives. They used to race to see who could hug me first. My frustration actually stems from a deep disappointment: my girls aren’t as open to me anymore.

  Jerusha and I know we’re not alone in asking, Why is it so hard to communicate with teens?

  Perhaps you’ve been asking yourself that for some time. Maybe grunts and one-liners have replaced what used to be an open dialogue. Have car rides with your teen turned into silent tech zones rather than a time to download the day’s events?

  Perhaps, like me, you feel fortunate when your teen does open up. I still have great talks with my girls. Trouble is, they usually happen when I’m least expecting it and often when I’m least prepared. For instance, right before bed seems like our oldest daughter’s favorite time to come out with a statement like, “The popular girls made fun of me at school today.” This is the most revealing thing she’s said all week, yet my eyes are so heavy I may have to prop them open with toothpicks so that I can be there for her. In my exhaustion, the best combination of words both to make her feel better and to help her develop resilience threatens to evade me. If I had only thought this through—but how could I have known? This is the first I’ve heard about it!

  Again I wonder, Why is it so hard to communicate with teens?

  Thankfully, understanding the radical changes in our teenagers’ brains and emotions can help us rethink how to best connect with the adolescents we love.

  Bio 101

  By this point in the book, you know that many radical and pervasive changes occur in an adolescent’s brain. You know that neural connections are being pruned in a “use it or lose it” manner, and that the integration of brain systems and the process of myelination (the brain’s method of “insulating its wiring” for increased efficiency and specialization) lead to significant changes and profound challenges. A teenager’s brain also undergoes significant construction in areas that control language.

  Indeed, an adolescent’s maturing brain leads to advanced language development. Healthy teens assimilate seven to ten new words per day, producing a working vocabulary of over forty thousand words.1 As abstract reasoning improves during the adolescent years, the language needed to express and comprehend abstract meanings matures along a similar trajectory. Fourteen-year-olds understand more nonliteral word meanings than their ten-year-old peers, and eighteen-year-olds recognize far more. Adolescents also grow in their ability to use sophisticated language skills such as persuasion and negotiation. Their capacity to relate engaging narratives and understand complex instructions increases as well.

  Ongoing education exposes adolescents to advanced language. However, without the maturing neural “hardware” for grasping and utilizing abstract concepts—including metaphor, symbolism, irony, and sarcasm—teens wouldn’t be able to communicate in terms beyond concrete realities or appreciate humor in the world. These are essential and marvelous gifts from God which propel your teen into adult life. (Honestly, though, sometimes we wish that irony, sarcasm, and the desire to passionately persuade and negotiate didn’t fully develop until teenagers were out of the house!)

  Roughly fifteen years ago, researchers discovered that “physical changes in the portion of the brain associated with language learning begin in early childhood but decline dramatically after age twelve. . . . In live testing of [adolescent] brain response to a language skills task, researchers saw a shift from activity in the temporal lobe—normally associated with language—to the cognitive center in the frontal lobe as teens matured.”2 Lead researcher Dr. Jay Giedd found that the temporal lobes, sometimes called the “seat of language” do not reach their gray-matter maximum until age sixteen. Only then do they undergo pruning.3

  In other words, roughly coinciding with puberty, your teen’s language capacity changes dramatically. Across adolescence, growth shifts away from temporal lobes, associated with language acquisition and expression, and toward the frontal lobes, responsible for advanced cognitive processing. As parents, we should expect some communication hiccups as the brain undergoes this essential remodeling. Bottom line: because your teen’s brain is under construction, communication will sometimes be a challenge.

  Whereas your concrete-thinking prepubescent child may have eagerly dialogued with you about every aspect of the day or looked to you for an answer to every problem, you will likely find that teens, who are learning to use new language and reasoning skills, turn inward and want to figure things out on their own.

  Intense neural remodeling can leave adolescents feeling confused. Teens have altogether new (and sometimes disconcerting) thoughts and feelings. Early adolescents don’t yet have a vocabulary to express these new emotions and the ideas that accompany them. Teenagers may feel they are the only ones who have ever thought or felt a particular way, that something is wrong with them, or that no one would understand even if they tried to articulate the storm and stress inside. As parents, we have a responsibility to model healthy discussion of feelings and thoughts. We also have a charge to patiently, empathetically, and graciously persist even when communication is difficult.

  Before looking at specific ways to foster communication with our under-construction teens, we’d like to note two important facets of neural development and language processing.

  The first relates to gender differences. Studies suggest that two areas of the brain—the Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas—both essential for language comprehension and expression, grow faster in adolescent girls than their male counterparts.4 Males usually “catch up” in early adulthood, but if you are the parent of a
teenage boy, take heart and be patient. Your adolescent son’s language skills may be on a slower track than those of your teenage daughters or the daughters of your friends.

  The second fact involves the intersection of developing language and the virtual ubiquity of digital communication by teens. Research indicates that the rise of texting, social media, and other forms of technological communication may cause teens to pare down their vocabulary from their capacity of over forty thousand words to a paltry eight hundred.5 Because digital communication on the scale adolescents now use it is so recent by scientific standards, further study is necessary to determine how pervasive this problem is or can become. Parents simply should be aware of this and encourage communication in other forms when teens are at home, around extended family members, or out in public. Perhaps the whole family can agree to turn off their phones or other devices when they visit grandma or during dinner. Initially, this may be difficult—for you and your teen—but it’s worth it. What talking actually does for the teenage brain is truly remarkable, and conversation happens far more readily when digital devices are set aside.

  Psych 101

  Beyond the neurological remodeling occurring in your teen, the psychological, relational, and social changes happening in and around them lead teens to communicate with their parents in different ways.