The other day, while we were talking on the phone, a mom friend said about her son, "He had a really rough time last year in eighth grade." She went on to explain that he didn't feel valued and appreciated by his teachers, and that he has some of those same feelings in high school.
Coincidently I had just heard Dr. William Stixrud speak about teen brain development. In his discussion Stixrud explained that teen brains have not yet developed the amygdala which is the brain center that is the primitive emotional center for adolescents and is particularly sensitive to fear. (Adults use the prefrontal cortex of the brain to experience empathy and accurately interpret social cues.)
What this means is that teens are really not going to be good at reading social cues. For boys, where the amygdala is particularly immature, it can cause poor modulation of emotions and lead to explosiveness. For boys and girls there tends to be an inability to read others' emotional intent.
What does this look like? "My Social Studies teacher hates me!!" is one way it shows up. Sometimes we feel we need to get to the bottom of this with the teacher, when, in fact, it has been a misinterpretation of a look or tone on the part of your teen.
Here's how it looks at home. You have said something neutral like "We need to be home by 6 so I can get dinner started," and the response is completely over the top! "It's not my fault! I can't help it that . . ." This happens when no blame is intended.
It can happen the opposite way, too. We believe we are communicating our frustration or concern through non-verbals and eventually reach a point of exasperation. They, on the other hand, appear completely baffled by our exasperation because they have not successfully read our non-verbals.
Perhaps most importantly is how this impacts their social relationships. This underdeveloped amygdala frequently causes a misinterpretation of others' intentions in this experiment called a "social life." It leads to very dramatic relationships and huge misunderstandings.
So, what to do with a teen? First, just keeping the brain development research in mind can help to reduce our initial frustration.
Next, wait until a calm period when you can talk to your child about how it takes time to learn to read people, and become good at figuring out what others are really feeling. (And some people never get good at it.) You can offer to explore alternative reasons that someone might act or respond in a certain way in the future.
One skill you can encourage that serves everyone well into adulthood is to check out perceptions. James Lehman suggests that it is always a useful approach to find out what people are feeling. Kids should be able to say "Is something wrong?" or "Did I do something wrong?" and then be able to hear the answer. Of course early on kids are likely to say "I CAN'T!!!" That's OK. Try it on the family and with other adults. It might be good practice for us to try, as well.
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