You can’t make me... teens hardwired to ignore mum

MOTHERS whose teenagers ignore repeated requests to tidy their bedrooms shouldn’t take it too personally.

If it is like talking to a brick wall, that may be because teens are hardwired to pay less attention to their parents than other people.

A study of 46 boys and girls aged seven to 16 found that when they reached 13 or 14, their brain started to tune out their mother’s voice and focus on others outside their family instead.

The children in the US study were played recordings of the same words spoken by their mother and by two female strangers. MRI scans revealed teenagers’ brains showed less activity when listening to their mother than a stranger, suggesting her voice had been deprioritised.

When teenagers listened to the stranger, their brain lit up in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex – a region which prioritises important information.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, found there was increased activity in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens, suggesting they found listening to someone outside their family more rewarding. Lead author Dr Daniel Abrams, from Stanford University, said: ‘These teenagers have to grow up, leave home and create their own social world, so it makes sense for them to pay more attention to people outside the home.

‘Parents really shouldn’t take this personally – when teens focus on other people, that is a normal part of development.’