A TIME OF CHANGE
IN HIS NEW BOOK ABOUT REVERSE PARENTING, DEAN BURNETT HELPS TEENAGERS TO NAVIGATE THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR PARENTS. HERE, HE CHATS TO US ABOUT THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN
WHO IS THIS BOOK IS FOR?
Ostensibly and officially, it’s for 11- to 16-year-olds who are finding that they are having a bit more of a tricky time with their parents than they used to. It’s common: your parents have been the bedrock of your life and suddenly you find yourself arguing with them a lot more. But, unlike pretty much every other book which addresses this subject, my book is an explanation for the child or teen.
I certainly found it quite cathartic to understand why that was happening, so unofficially, I think the book is for anyone who’s been a teenager.
WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO WRITE THIS GUIDE?
Well, I could give you some spiel about the ‘sign of the times’ and the intergenerational disputes, the strong political divide. Take the environmental aspect: Greta Thunberg is the leading voice of climate change, she’s only 16. Right now, we’re at a very, very important point in history where the older and the younger generation are perhaps more distant from each other than they’ve ever been. Something which addresses that, or at least helps people to understand it, could be helpful, and I think it is an important thing to consider right now.
But if I’m being completely honest, it was my editor Jamie who first approached me, and said: “I’ve got this idea for a reverse parenting book. Would you like to write it?”
I thought, yes, yes I would, and that’s pretty much what happened.
“The things that affect you as a teen will stay with you for the longest time, the rest of your life. Particularly music, apparently”
WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT THE TEENAGE BRAIN, COMPARED TO THE ADULT BRAIN?
Loads of things. The adolescent phase of brain development is a distinct phase all by itself, though exactly when you start being an adult is a very fluctuating point, which no one seems to really agree on. When you’re a child, you’re absorbing everything. Some estimates say that in the first few years of your life, your brain is forming a million new connections every second, which is an incredible amount of data gathering and absorption. That carries on until we hit adolescence, though not at that phenomenal rate. Then, the brain sort of stops, takes stock, and says, right, we’ve got all this information. How much of this do we actually need?
It’s like getting a brand-new smartphone. You’re so excited, you fill it up with every single app, meme and download you can get your hands on. It’s fun for a while, but eventually, that phone’s going to become pretty useless. You’ll try to find something basic like the calculator, and have to scroll through 50 pages of apps. With so much information in the brain, it’s all about efficiency. Adolescence is when the brain starts becoming more efficient. It clears away the junk you don’t need. There’s a process called pruning, where lots of synapses that have never been used more than once are sort of just flushed away, and the resources for them are taken elsewhere.
WHY ARE TEENS SO EMOTIONAL?
There are some estimates that the front part of your brain, where all that higher thinking happens, doesn’t finish developing until your mid-20s. The more central parts of the brain are older and more fundamental – which control things like emotions and impulses and risk-taking – they take less time to mature, so they’re as efficient as possible in your early teens.
So, adolescents have this period where they can control their emotions, but it’s a lot harder for them to do so, and the emotional experiences are far more intense as a result. Their emotions are harder to suppress, control or just keep under wraps. But they’re constantly told to do just that. “Stop acting out. Stop being dramatic. Behave yourself; you’re being stupid. You’re being ridiculous.”
This is the time when they’re supposed to learn how to do all that stuff. If you suppress their emotions, if you make them keep quiet and sit still and never do anything, the brain never develops that ability, and it does cause serious problems down the line.
HOW MUCH OF OUR PERSONALITY IS SET DURING OUR TEENAGE YEARS?
The things you learn in your teens will stick with you for a long time, that’s when you’re undergoing substantial development. A lot of your baselines are established there too, like what your sexual preferences are, because you’re flooded with these hormones giving you strange new feelings you’ve never had before, and strange longings that you can’t quite get your head around.
There are some studies that show that because your teens are when your emotions are most powerful, the things that affect you as a teen will stay with you for the longest time, the rest of your life. Particularly music, apparently. That’s why so many people think “music is rubbish; it was much better when I was young”, that’s because when you’re a teen, things like music hit you at an emotional level far more profoundly than they do as an adult. Because the adult brain is more mature and more set, nothing else will really hit that same level of intoxication or emotional stimulation as it does when you’re a teen. I’d say in 50 years’ time there will be music journalists saying, “Oh, the 2010s, that was the year for music – we had Mambo No. 5, you don’t have that.”
[Actually, Mambo No. 5 was released in 1999. And we’re pretty optimistic no one was emotionally stimulated by it.] DEAN BURNETT Dean is a neuroscientist and full-time author. His latest book, Why Your Parents Are Driving You Up The Wall And What To Do About It, is out now. Interviewed by BBC Science Focus editorial assistant Amy Barrett.
DISCOVER MORE
You can listen to our full interview with Dean in an upcoming episode of the Science Focus podcast sciencefocus.com/science-focus-podcast