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by Heather Neary
“You never let me do anything! Krista gets to go because her mom’s not stupid! I hate you!”
“I don’t care what you say. You don’t understand anything. I don’t need you.”
“Fine. School was fine. Why are you bothering me about it?”
“I don’t care what my grades are.”
I know what you’re thinking. These statements must have been made by the acknowledged monster of human development: the teenager. Well, they weren’t. In the first case, the culprit was an 11-year old girl. The second child was a 12-year old boy, and the last two were uttered, with a disgusted snarl, by my own 10-year old son. These children, a word they truly hate, are the newest monster—the “tweenager.”
Tweenagers refer to a group of children, ages 8-12, who have begun the messy journey through puberty, and who are too young to deal with massive hormonal changes that take place during the transformation from childhood to adulthood. According to neuroscientists, abstract reasoning, memory and the formal capacity for planning mature by age 15 or 16. Emotionally, then, these “tweenagers” are still children, but physically and partially psychologically, they are becoming adults.
Beginning at puberty, which can start as early as 8 for girls and boys, the brain is reshaped. At first, neurons and synapses multiply in huge numbers inside a growing brain. This frenzy of intellectual energy enables children to learn at a fast rate. Eventually, as puberty nears its end, 40 percent of these initial connections are lost, because by then we have begun to specialize, and do not need as much capacity.
That means that during the early stages of puberty, there is so much going on in the adolescent brain that these children have a hard time distinguishing between what is right and wrong, what is risky and what is safe, and what is appropriate to say in public. They say things like the statements you saw at the beginning of this article because they truly don’t see anything wrong with them, not to anger and frustrate you.
We always, as parents, want to say, “what were you thinking?” But in fact, they’re not thinking. That part of the brain, the reasoning, rational prefrontal cortex, doesn’t finish its development until our early 20s. Go ahead and groan. You know you want to. This lack of discretion means that we, as parents, must control where our children go, who they go with, and what they’re doing at all times, even though it makes them very mad at us.
The brain develops from back to front. That means that when children are born, they perform all the automatic functions, like breathing, blinking and other mundane tasks, but they don’t think like adults. The prefrontal cortex, the foremost part of the brain, controls emotional learning and high-level self regulation. This is why we say, almost hopefully, “grow up,” to our older children, but we can’t really expect them to. They just can’t think like us. This distinction in brain function is also why you want to make sure that you, as a parent, exert authority over your children and keep them on a short leash until they are able to do that higher-level thinking. Otherwise you send them out with as much protection as a T-shirt in a snowstorm.
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You might be saying, “but I thought the brain was through developing at age 12.” As a matter of fact, even psychologists who test IQ in children say that it stabilizes at 11 … but it doesn’t. Dr. Jay Geidd, a neuroscientist of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), used repeated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests to follow a group of children through puberty and for a period of 13 years. He discovered that adolescence is when most of the changes in the brain occur, so when your 8-year-old goes from being a sweet mommy’s child to a growling “I don’t want to talk to you” tweenager, don’t be alarmed. It’s perfectly normal.
We have to be careful not to punish them, however, for just being who they are. Maybe their immature brains are not a blanket excuse for constant bad behavior, but try to explain to them WHY they can’t do the things you tell them not to do. “Because I said so” is no longer good enough, not if you want them to learn. They will internalize your explanation better than you think if you’re patient with them. Consistency is key.
Now we are on to the monetary side of things. The statements, “I have to have that purse or I’ll just die,” or “I have to have those shoes because everybody’s wearing them,” are annoying to hear, especially since we’re not all wealthy. We shouldn’t blame the kids for these annoying behaviors though. It’s sneakier than that. The idea of “tweenagers” was developed not in the psychological community, but in the world of marketing.
American marketing executives have figured out that our 8- to 12-year-olds want to be teenagers and to be as “cool” as their older counterparts. That means that all advertizing that appears to be aimed at teenagers is actually aimed at their younger brothers and sisters. Look at magazines like Tiger Beat, for instance. It is full of pinups of teenage heartthrobs and information on Nickelodeon’s teenage shows. They are all actually aimed at the “tweenagers”who so desperately want to have adult privileges and responsibility, even though they don’t know why. That is why they MUST have those clothes or that bike or those shoes that are actually skates.
If you’re wondering, too, why your
child doesn’t seemto care about school, it
is because with a few exceptions,
tweenagers have very little brain activity
in the region that controls motivation for
reward. In short, they don’t see the point
in caring yet. In order to get them to succeed
in school, you almost have to
develop a reward systemthat they do care
about. For instance, with my son, who
hates school—every part of it—I give
him 10 minutes of his video game for
every 20 minutes he spends doing his
homework and studying. The work also
has to be correct in order to count. I have
no complaints anymore. Find your
child’s currency, what does motivate
them, and use it to get what you need out
of them academically. By the time they’re
in college, they’ll probably care.
The scariest part for parents, though, is that younger and younger children are participating in very risky behaviors. My son watches a show on Nickelodeon called “What would happen if …” In this show, really “cool” looking teenagers do ridiculously crazy things to try out questions like:What would happen if we tried to swim in jello? Or what would happen if we made a huge remote control car and ran it into a wall with people in it? Of course there’s a disclaimer about not trying this at home, but children don’t see that part. They seem to possess an absolute obsession with risky and thrilling behavior; they need risk to feel good.
There’s a brain explanation for that one, too. Because the Amygdala, the emotional center of the brain, pretty much runs the tweenagers’ thoughts, those children need the emotional equivalent of a full theme park to feel what riding a single roller coaster would do for an adult. Their emotional responses are immature, so they seek emotional satisfaction in things that make us ask, again, “What were you THINKING?”
So, how do you keep them safe without losing your own sanity? Here are 10 hints to help you tame your tweenager:
1. Don’t try to reason with tweenagers. They believe they are right, and because they CAN’T reason properly as yet, nothing you say will change their minds. 2. Set up only slightly flexible boundaries, so that they feel like they have some control over their lives, but they are safe at all times. 3. Try not to get angry with them when they say things that are hurtful, even the dreaded “I hate you!” They can’t help the brain to mouth function yet---no filter at all. 4. Have honest and real conversations with them about the hard subjects: drugs, sex, and other risky behaviors, when they are 10 or 11. Don’t wait until they are teenagers. That is way too late for you to have the greatest influence. 5. When they say they HAVE to have those shoes because everyone else does, don’t bother with the “well, you aren’t everyone else” conversation. They want to fit in now. Individuality comes later. If you can, buy them. If you can’t buy them, be honest about why you can’t. 6. Make sure they have real responsibilities at home. Chores seem barbaric to your tweenager, but they are a great lesson in self-sufficiency. 7. Get to know their friends, and especially the parents of their friends. They could prove wonderful allies in your “tweenager survival” objectives, and if you know them, you can call to see if they actually ARE there at the sleepover/party. 8. Closely monitor their school habits. Grades in America drop drastically following the fourth grade, and some of that phenomenon has to do with puberty making school a low priority. Make sure they don’t fail without at least trying to help them. 9. Even though you changed their diapers, fed them and loved them as small children, they AREN’T small children anymore. Try to get to know who they are becoming. Getting stuck in the past will ensure that you don’t know them at all in a few years. 10. Finally, take a deep breath. You have loved this child since he or she was born, and you will always love this child. As my father always says: “this too shall pass.” |
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