Grey Matters
Through gritted teeth, my partner and I were recently marvelling at some audaciously contrary behaviour from our little boy. He didn't want to waste valuable playing time by washing his hands after doing the wee he was clearly holding in so he informed me I was going to hold his “dingle” while he went. I laughed and said “Nice try” but he insisted via increasingly incomprehensible screaming that this was going to happen. When I refused, his tortured shouts for “SOMEONE” to hold his willy drew his mum into the melee. Somehow resisting the honour he'd bestowed upon her to become some kind of second-tier dick-rack, Gemma reinforced my sentiments that in our house, NOTHING is given when it's demanded in an aggressive manner, be that more food, an extra episode of Paw Patrol or the cupping of someone else's genitals so they don't have to wash their hands.... this wasn't the response he was after. So unexpected and incandescent was his spiralling tantrum, we began desperately questioning if there was something more concerning behind it??... Subsequent investigations revealed he just really didn't want to wash his hands! Who says toddlers are complex individuals?
Efforts to placate him with platitudes such as “Come on buddy, this grumpiness is wasting far more playtime than washing our hands” and even, “We actually would have held your dingle if you'd asked again nicely but we can't now on principle” (that particular example's not in any of the parenting textbooks)
At this point our words of reason were falling on small, deaf ears only slightly less red than the rest of his angry little face, contorted with rage at the injustice of the world. This, we realised, was the behaviour of a “threenager”and whilst we acknowledged it as a natural stage of child development which passes relatively quickly - “The years fly by” says everyone who's ever spawned (... though fuck me some of the days can be long), the spectre of the actual teenage years suddenly reared its acne-riddled head. One day this sweet little ball of relentless energy and wonder will be a lanky streak of wobbly-voiced confusion - All the narcissism, bad decisions and irrational moods of his toddler years but with even later bedtimes, less hugs and more access to the car keys.
Whilst teenagers are currently reinventing themselves in the eyes of the world as either its best hope at a bright and inclusive future, or righteous “snowflakes” whose wokeness is a deliberately petulant affront to previous generations (Fuck you Clarkson, you still suck), the stereotype of moody, lazy, self-absorbed, irresponsible, walking hormone clusters is enduring, and not without some merit. Nevertheless, only relatively recently neuroscience has stepped in to paint a somewhat fairer picture.
Myelin, the fatty substance which coats the brain's synapses like insulation over wiring, builds up over time, starting from the back of the brain and developing forwards over several years. In teenagers, the brain's frontal and pre-frontal cortices, responsible for empathy, insight and risk taking are still very much works in progress. They simply don't have all the neurological tools to meet adults' often lofty expectations of how they should behave (Something I should really remind myself when shaking my head at how my only-just 4-year-old sometimes “chooses” to navigate the world) Sometimes it seems it's less a case of choice and more a case of wiring.
As many parents will attest, even smart teenagers make worryingly irrational decisions. In the run up to my GCSE's I spent a lot of time tinkering with motocross bikes in my friend's shed. We rode these helmet-less (and shirtless) across the local golf course, to the wild remonstrations of several club-waving adults, at least one of whom was bound to know our parents – there were only 2000 people in the village where I grew up.... No wonder I felt bored enough to ocassionally sniff petrol. A year after my GCSE's I managed to top out the speedometer on my mum's Nissan Micra – something over 115mph – mostly due to the gradient of hill I was travelling down with five young lives crammed into a car the size of a fridge.... I don't recall if I was stoned at the time. I often was.
Nevertheless, I got 7 A*s and 3 A's in those GCSE's, suggesting there was actually a brain in my nut, but it was clearly prone to dysfunction...
...which makes sense when neuroscience reveals the massive rewiring procedure the brain undertakes throughout the teenage years – something akin to a a software upgrade. It becomes quicker and more sophisticated, allowing adults to better balance impulses, desires, ambitions, self-interest, morals, rules and implications, resulting in more nuanced, complex behaviours. But any software upgrade is susceptible to bugs – new pathways need time to adapt to each other and teens are constantly learning to use their new networks. This can result in the clumsy set of wild contradictions which so frequently frustrate us in teens. Of course they still have free will and are ultimately responsible for their actions, but they're not playing with quite the level deck we might assume. Stress, fatigue and new challenges can all cause misfires.
Experts agree teenage brains seek reward more hungrily than older grey matter. The emotionally reactive ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens respond to reward and its anticipation and in situations where value cues appear – eg. four friends thinking you're cool (despite the fact it's a Nissan Micra you're driving), these areas shout the loudest, riding roughshod over the square old prefrontal cortex's attempts to inhibit impulse and regulate risk-taking. Adolescents are perfectly capable of making rational decisions, but in the heat of the moment, their still naïve brain circuitry means a measured appreciation of long-term consequences is frequently no match for immediate gratification. Cue dangerous driving, binge-drinking, criminal damage and several thousand doses of chlamydia.
Where expert opinion could help the bumbling teenage cause is in highlighting that far from being simply a neurological car crash-in-waiting, the teenage brain is a highly competent and adaptive organ, capable of extremely quick learning and memorisation and still open to the creation of myriad new pathways. Where parents might see a propensity for unexpected and reckless endangerment, neuroscience observes a brain still willing to take risks in its pursuit of fulfilment and ultimately a longer, happier life – Statistics prove people with strong social networks live longer, healthier lives and nobody is more concerned with their social network than teens. Their frequent melodrama and heartbreaking efforts to distance themselves from us as parents are a natural function of their brains reaching out towards new horizons. Yes, they'll fuck up and yes, they'll frequently be ungrateful, surly or downright rude, but it's an increasingly complex world and they're still working it out, the gawky, spotty, brace-faced little divs.
At a time of great global and neurological upheaval, when mental health can teeter on a knife edge, more than ever we as parents need to count to 10, however obnoxious our teens may be acting and let them know we're there to hold them should they need.... just not their dingles.
