We currently have three teenagers in our family – Brett, Colter, and Emery.  So far, I’ve been very pleased with the relationships that Jim and I have been able to maintain with them.  

The hardest part has been making time to spend with just the teenagers without the younger children interrupting.  They don’t mind hanging out with me together to talk about things, but they really don’t want the younger five children involved in these “heavier” conversations.  My teenagers definitely require more time to process through stuff with me than the younger children do.  Bed time (after tucking the younger children in) has been a great time to just hang out and talk with them without their younger siblings “encroaching” on this time.  

What I have found with all of these discussions is that my teenagers really want to grow in character.  They’ve always had that desire, but the main difference is that now they want to understand themselves in much deeper ways than they did when they were younger.  The children have always heard Jim and I say, “You need to work hard and not be lazy.”   That used to be fine because they knew that lazy equals bad and hard work equals good. 

But now my teenagers want to go much more in depth.  They know that being lazy is bad and working hard is good.  We’ve covered that.  Now they want to talk about why the desire to be lazy is so strong and what they can do to fight against that temptation.  They recognize that in a few years they won’t have Mom and Dad pushing them to not be lazy.  They’re going to have to have the internal strength and character to fight that temptation themselves.

Here is another example. When parenting toddlers, we just told them what to do.  But once past toddlerhood, Jim and I almost always tell the children the “what” and the “why” we do things.

• Don’t touch the hot stove because you will get burned.
• Say thank you because it is polite and shows respect and appreciation.
• Wear your safety gear because if you injure yourself it will not only hurt you, but be a burden on everyone else who has to do your chores while you recuperate from your carelessness. (a very recent conversation Jim had with the boys)
• Wash your hands (with Goat Milk Stuff soap, of course!) because it not only removes the dirt, but also removes germs so you don’t get sick.

When the children were little, they really only listened to the “what” and didn’t particularly care about the “why”.  But I’ve noticed that the older children are now much more concerned with the “why”.  They want to talk about the “why’s” and understand them and sometimes even challenge them.  I have found that if the teenagers can understand, agree with, and internalize the “why’s” then they are much better at taking care of the “what’s” all by themselves.

I share all of this because I recently read something that I have never heard before.  In the book How Children Succeed by Paul Tough, it says,

“Researchers have found that there is something uniquely out of balance about the adolescent brain that makes it especially susceptible to bad and impulsive decisions.  Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University, has analyzed two separate neurological systems that develop in childhood and early adulthood that together have a profound effect on the lives of adolescents.  The problem is, these two systems are not well aligned.  The first, called the incentive processing system, makes you more sensation seeking, more emotionally reactive, more attentive to social information.   The second, called the cognitive control system, allows you to regulate all those urges.  The reason the teenage years have always been such a perilous time, Steinberg says, is that the incentive processing system reaches its full power in early adolescence while the cognitive control system doesn’t finish maturing until you’re in your twenties.” 

Wow – do you get the significance of that?  Does that not explain a lot of the stupidity that you often see in teenage and young adult behavior?  And do you see how powerful that will be in our teens’ lives if we can help them to understand what that means to them?

I haven’t had a chance to sit down and talk about this with Brett, Colter, and Emery.  But it’s in the back of my mind and I’m just waiting for a good opportunity.  I don’t believe that the knowledge of  these two systems will magically make them not make bad decisions.  But I do think that it will help me to parent and correct them so that they can learn faster from those mistakes.  And of course it is my hope that understanding why they have some impulses will help them to conquer those impulses even without a fully developed cognitive control system.

Were you as surprised as I was to read that quote?  And do you find it at all meaningful?