Adolescence is a difficult time, remember yours?Because you should know that for your parents it was also a complicated phase. The good news is that knowing how the teen’s brain works helps parents and children get through this stage in a less traumatic way than usual.
Adolescence is a period of exploration and growth, a time of opportunity, but also of vulnerabilities, if as a parent or educator you are eager to know and analyze how your teenager thinks and reacts, it is good to know that you will not help him. only to take advantage of this moment to grow, but also to avoid the traumas that will drag on throughout his life, and that are inevitable. To do this, it is good to separate what happens in the adolescent’s brain at this point.
- Daniel Siegel.
- In his book Brain Storm: The Power and Purpose of the Adolescent Brain.
- Says there are four essential characteristics of adolescence that are vital to the development of the teen’s own identity.
- Which Siegel calls essence.
Emotional Brightness (ES: Emotional Spark) Social Engagement (SE: Social Commitment) Search for News (N: New Research) Creative Exploration (EC: Creative Exploration)
All of this remains associated with something that, in many parents, generates mixed feelings: increasing the autonomy and independence of their teenage child, however, parents feel threatened because their teen needs to reaffirm themselves and develop their own identity.
It is not easy to recognize that a child has become a free spirit, has changed, has new interests and emotions.
Siegel says changes in adolescents occur between the age of 12 and 24, transforming the brain decisively and complicatedly. Changes in the brain during this period involve:
Adolescence is a period of risk, but also a period of opportunity
These changes during adolescence help make the brain more integrated and help create better brain coordination. It is a process of restructuring the adolescent brain that promotes opportunity, but also vulnerability. It is during this period of life that most mental health disorders can occur.
Having children is a transitional stage of life that symbolizes the end of the parents’ own childhood. When children move from child to adult, parents face another transition in their own evolution.
Parents also experience a change that can awaken their consciousness and existential fear. Parents often defend themselves against these realities by clinging to and influencing their teenage children in a way that diminishes their essence.
To promote the transition to adolescence that allows the young man to mature, parents should see him as a unique individual with his own mental experiences, but this is not possible when parents want to continue living thanks to their children.
When parents can begin to see themselves and their children as separate individuals and treat them with the level of respect and autonomy they deserve, they are better prepared to put aside any preconceived ideas about their children. often has more to do with the parent’s own story.
An important first step in changing parents’ relationships with their children is for parents to better understand their own minds.
The constant transformation that defines childhood is even more important in adolescence, when the relationship between parents and children also undergoes a significant evolution; in fact, there may be no better opportunity than adolescence for parents to get to know their children in depth and discover what is really going on in their minds.
For this to happen, it is essential that parents separate what is happening in their own minds from what can happen through their children’s minds, and separate their teenage experiences from their children’s teenage experiences.
Parents can have much better and much better relationships with their children if they are able to understand and accept their style of personal attachment and learn new forms of relationships that will help their children reach adulthood on the right foot.