Over the Easter weekend, I have had the luxury of time to reread Barbara Strauch book, "The Primal Teen- What the new discoveries about the about the teenage brain tell us about our kids ".Many parts of the book resonated with me as we live with similar behaviours everyday and hear from parents about the challenges of raising teens. A few quotes from the book, without comment:
- At a certain point around puberty, the brain undergoes a growth spurt, especially in the area that makes us humans, the frontal lobes.
- Adolescents, some neuroscientists now warn, may be one of the worst times to expose a brain to drugs and alcohol or even to a steady dose of violent video games.If "that teenage brain is still changing so much, we have to think about what kinds of experiences we want that growing brain to have."
- Dr Harry Chugani says, " the teenage years rival the terrible twos as a time of general brain discombobulation".
- A teenager's sleep need, in fact far exceeds that of an adult.
- Most teenagers - 80% - traverse the teenage years with aplomb. But these teenagers' successes, Blum says, isn't on immutable attributes such as wealth or race, but on more mundane things like having at least one adult who cares about them and being connected to their school - this is the ordinary magic.
