Emotions

First up, we know from the research that kids and teens who have a positive relationship with their parent/s, as a result, have a protective buffer against adolescent mental illness and risk-taking behaviour. Interesting eh?

So if things have gotten off the rails with your child, perhaps think about what you might do to support a better relationship with them. We'd suggest:

Spending time with them doing some of the things they love doing
Talking with them - we find after 8pm or on trips to and from activities and events are often a good time (while they're beside you)
Just letting them know you're there if they need you. And yep, you can say that out loud.

During adolescence, the brain goes through a lot of changes that help young people grow and develop into adults. Here are some of the main things that happen:

Firstly, the brain becomes more efficient in terms of how it processes information. This is because the connections between different parts of the brain become stronger and more streamlined. This helps teenagers to think more critically, solve problems more effectively, and make better decisions.
Secondly, the brain goes through a process called "pruning", where it eliminates unused neural connections to make room for more important ones. This helps the brain to become more specialized and better at performing specific tasks.
Thirdly, the prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain responsible for planning, decision-making, and impulse control - undergoes significant development during adolescence. This is why teenagers can sometimes struggle with making good decisions and controlling their impulses - their prefrontal cortex hasn't fully developed yet.

Overall, these changes are all part of the normal process of adolescent brain development, and they help young people to become more independent, responsible, and capable adults. Pretty cool, right?

But it's good to know that the adolescent years are a big brain developmental time - not dissimilar to the newborn brain development time. But at this stage the big thing to factor in is that part of their development means that emotions are heightened. That starts to make things make sense, hey?

Dr Daniel Seigel (who we highly recommend) describes the brain development affecting our adolescent kids big emotions as e-MOTION - their brains are preparing them for independence (in motion), and being hyper-alert of others is part of this. But, they’re not that great at it yet, so it also means that teens sometimes misinterpret neutral situations as negative. You may have examples of this. You’ll find yourself saying things like: "I don’t think he meant it like that."

It’s clear that being "emotional" is part of adolescence. But how can we help when reasoning is tricky?

Well, as parents we have to act as the "balance" for them - reacting and behaving in ways that they can see and even-out their own reactions.

It’s like when we’re scared, we look to others to see if they are too - same thing. Amazingly too, how we react and support our teens when they’re experiencing big emotions (for example, exam stress), and how we support them through this time (or otherwise) will have an important impact on how they perform.

In some ways, it comes down to us "modelling appropriate emotional responses".  The golden rule seems to be – whatever it is, keep your cool! (Sutter, 2016).

Our teens analyse their own interactions with others. They are sensitive to each other’s emotions, expressions, and opinions, but can also place more emphasis on how they think others perceive them. So it's important to try and clock the self-conscious response you may be noticing from your teen. 

This heightened sensitivity tends to taper off around the time teens hit the age of 17 (ish). (Nobilo, 2017). Phew!

Remember that teens still need on-going support and guidance from you.

This is a time when we can make the mistake of assuming teens don’t need as much monitoring or can cope alone or with their "all-important" friends.

They’re not ready yet - so keep actively parenting, even if they look like they don’t need you. They actually do! The research says so. (Nobilo, 2017).