“The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids”
If you are a healthcare provider working with adolescents, their families, institutions or organizations involved in providing services to teens or just happen to have a teen kicked back on your living room couch, there is finally a wonderfully readable guide to the adolescent brain.
New York Times medical science and health editor Barbara Strauch was intrigued enough by reports of radical new discoveries in adolescent brain development to begin researching the subject. What she has put together in her recently published book, “The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids”(Doubleday, 2003. 242 pp. $24.95. ISBN 0-385-50339-3) is a mandatory addition to the library of any professional working with adolescents and their families.
The advent of increasingly sophisticated brain imaging technologies now make it possible to peek at the most subtle, fluttering flow of neuron functioning. Beginning in the early 90’s with the work of Dr. Jay Giedd, a neuroscientist at the National Institute of Health, brain researchers have been adding to our knowledge of adolescent brain development at an amazing rate.
While much of the research confirms many of our professional assumptions and anecdotal insights of adolescent brain development, the truth of the matter is that the degree and overall extent of brain development in the teen years soars far beyond anything we ever imagined and goes a long way to better understanding why teens are the way they are.
Research confirms the entire brain is going through simultaneous radical changes throughout the adolescent years – even those chunks of cranial landscape we used to assume were pretty much fully formed before adolescence. This changing brain is the basis for the swinging moods, lack of foresight, irrational impulsivity, selfishness and selflessness, general goofiness, daydreaminess and wild creativity that make teens the wonderfully exasperating creatures they are.
“As it turns out,” Strauch writes, “Teenagers may, indeed, be a bit crazy. But they are crazy according to a primal blueprint; they are crazy by design.”
For we adults who work or live with adolescents, this is an essential insight to fully grasp. We need to know that even though teens may appear fully grown – indeed they may tower over us physically – their brains have not completed the journey to adulthood. Assuming their cognitive abilities have kept apace of their physical development is unfair to them and a formula for conflict.
This book is an appropriate reference to suggest for those parents who aren’t intimidated by the thought of reading a book.
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