Emotion overload

Teens are wired differently. The rational brain hasn’t completely formed. That means adults need to adjust their own thinking and behaviour when communicating with them, writes David Skipwith.

As a parent you need to be able to stop and notice, and name your own emotions and realise that ‘actually, if I respond like X I’m probably going to get Y response from my teenager’. And that’s really not going to help at all.

Adults can make life so difficult for teenagers. Those who have survived their teens may look back through rose-tinted glasses on those halcyon days full of freedom and no responsibilities. But while navigating your way through those turbulent years, it can seem like parents are deliberately going out of their way to make your life unbearable.

“When I was 14, I was like, ‘all my friends are drinking, I want to start drinking’ and [my parents] said no. I was like, ‘this is so unfair!” says Rose Oldershaw, from a place of enlightenment, four years on from what she considered an outrageous injustice.

“But now I’m like, ‘what the hell?’ I would never give a 14-year-old alcohol.

“Looking back, I see the limitations they placed on me when I was younger are totally understandable. Even if I didn’t think so at the time, I think so now.”

If you have a teenager in your home – voluntarily self-isolating in their bedroom for long periods between snacks, or staring at themselves endlessly in the bathroom mirror – this kind of dispute may sound familiar.

But while the teenage brain remains an enigma to many adults, there are evolutionary reasons behind the unpredictable ways teenagers think and behave.

If you’re struggling to understand their reasoning, there’s a good reason why: teens rely on a different part of the brain to think than the rest of us.

While adults can draw upon the rational part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex – the two lobes that sit at the front of the brain behind the forehead – that area is not fully developed in teens, and won’t be totally functional until they reach adulthood in their late-20s or early-30s.

“The prefrontal cortex is one of our uniquely human pieces of the brain that other animals don’t share,” says Dougal Sutherland, clinical practice manager at Victoria University’s School of Psychology.

“And that’s responsible for things like decisionmaking, planning and, probably importantly for teenagers, things like impulse and self-control.

“That part of the brain is developing during adolescence. So you are confronted with adolescents who have lots of hormones flying around and experimenting with life, but don’t necessarily have the self-control structures or the ability to plan ahead as much as someone who might be 35 or 40.”

ALL THE FEELS

Instead, a teen’s thinking is driven more by the amygdala, two small almond-shaped groups of cells found down near the base of the brain’s left and right temporal lobes.

The amygdala is far from rational and helps process memory, along with strong emotions such as fear, anxiety, aggression, anger, and pleasure. It also controls our fight-or-flight response when we feel threatened or afraid.

The amygdala is renowned for hijacking a teenager’s prefrontal cortex, leading them to think with their feelings and sometimes make poor decisions, rather than considering their emotions and the potential consequences of their actions.

You might feel an “amygdala hijack” when someone cuts you off in traffic, causing a sudden emotional response, before your prefrontal cortex interrupts to help rein in your feelings.

“People use the term amygdala hijack. That’s getting overwhelmed by your emotions. And that obviously happens more easily in somebody who’s still developing the prefrontal cortex,” Sutherland says.

“So that’s where you get teenagers being impulsive, or being much more at the behest of their emotions, because they’re learning how to deal with those, partly because they’re new, and partly because their brain is still trying to figure out ‘how do I deal with this stuff ,’ because it’s a work in progress at that stage.”

But when it comes to why teenagers become obsessed with how they look and what others think of them, and less concerned with mum’s and dad’s opinions, this has more to do with another change – in allegiances.

IT’S ALL ABOUT ME

Adolescence is a time when we begin discovering who we are, and carving out our own identity, often in contrast to our families.

A teenager’s peers become the most important people in their lives, and teens often find new influences that they embrace and begin identifying with more than their family.

“You might reject things that your parents tell you to do or believe in, simply because you’re trying to figure out who you are,” Sutherland says.

“And you might not know who you are yet, but you certainly don’t want to be like that.”

Add to that a teenager’s tendency to react emotionally, and your once lovely little boy or girl can seem like a total stranger when they snap or grunt to show their disinterest or annoyance at almost anything a parent or authority figure says.

“Hormonal mood swings when you’re growing is definitely a thing,” Oldershaw says.

“When I was 14, I felt like we were arguing all the time. I didn’t do my chores, so that resulted in a little bit of conflict. But I know that, had I done them, everything would have been smooth sailing.”

Sutherland says parents need to learn to put themselves in their teenager’s shoes, and keep a lid on their own emotional responses when facing off with an angry or emotional adolescent.

“If you’re confronted with somebody [who] is sullen, grumpy, irritable, and oppositional, it is hard to stop and have empathy for that. The natural response to that is to get angry and annoyed.

“And so part of parenting a teenager is around having to go back and check your own emotional regulation skills so that you don’t respond to them.

“As a parent, you need to be able to stop and notice, and name your own emotions and realise that ‘actually, if I respond like X I’m probably going to get Y response from my teenager’. And that’s really not going to help at all.”

BODY CLOCK SHIFT

Another factor in why a teenager may be grumpy is sleep – or a lack of it.

Sleep is critical to a teenager’s brain development, however a biological shift in their circadian rhythm, or body clock, means they often don’t feel ready for bed until later at night.

The use of mobile phones and online devices can be a further obstacle to them getting a good sleep, and lead to confrontations with parents.

Teens are also more sensitive to the effects of blue light from devices than adults, which can further delay the release of the sleep hormone melatonin and leave them tossing and turning.

A lack of sleep can further exacerbate a teenager’s emotional thinking and behaviour. The same is true for adults, of course, but this is more pronounced in adolescents.

Sleep-deprived teens are also at greater risk of suffering from depression and anxiety, and other mental health issues.

“If I consistently don’t get enough sleep, I can’t function,” Oldershaw says. “But I do find myself quite productive at night and that’s when I get work done for uni.

“During quarantine, I definitely became a night owl. I wouldn’t go to sleep before 4am, and I would still end up waking relatively early, like 8.30am, so I wasn’t getting enough sleep for my body, and it definitely had an impact on me.”

Some high schools offer senior students the option of a later start time for classes, to enable them to get more sleep to concentrate better to improve their academic performance.

“[Teenagers] ideally would get several hours more sleep a night than an adult would,” Sutherland says.

“Their body and their brain are undergoing a lot of development, and you need sleep to help with that.

“But the difficulty is that the onset of their sleep is later. They tend to not feel sleepy until later in the evening, and then they want to sleep later in the morning, which in itself causes lots of problems in terms of conflict.”

With teenagers facing myriad complex issues, it’s important that parents realise that this phase of life, and its associated problems, are completely natural.

Parents should not judge what kind of adult their kid is going to be when looking at them as a teenager.

Sutherland recommends parents establish firm parameters of behaviour without worrying about trying to fix everything about their teen. Open communication is also vital to a healthy parent-teen relationship.

“It would be a balance. You don’t want to just say, ‘oh well, that’s just how they are, there’s nothing we can do about it’, and equally you don’t want to come down like a tonne of bricks every time they do something wrong.

“There’s a middle ground called authoritative parenting, so that’s being able to be empathetic, kind and, at the same time, sticking to some clear boundaries and rules.

“It’s not being lax and it’s not being authoritarian. It’s a middle ground between those two. They still need your help, and you’re still a role model in helping them learn and shape their own behaviours. So you haven’t given up on that, but you’re being more delicate in how you implement your parenting as a role model.”