Parents undoubtedly dread the moment their child enters puberty. This phase isn’t always a party for the parent, and certainly not for the child. Developmental neuroscientist Eveline Crone explains how you can empathize with a teenager.
Your child will inevitably slowly detach from you. “That’s natural. A child can’t sit on their mother’s lap their whole life,” says Eveline Crone, professor of developmental neuroscience. She co-authored Generation Self-Eastem with university lecturer in special education Renske van der Cruijsen and researches the teenage brain.
Dealing with someone in puberty isn’t always easy. Crone: “Most young people get through it well, but not all. About 10 to 15 percent of young people experience mental health issues. Psychological disorders often manifest in this phase of adolescence as well. Feelings of gloom and discouragement are also unavoidable in this phase.”
You also get used through this phase
It’s good to realize that you yourself went through that phase, says Crone. “You just can’t remember it well. But you too were sometimes gloomy, rude, and then suddenly cheerful again. You thought you knew everything better, you also had great feelings of shame and insecurity, and the opinion of your peers was much more important than that of your parents.”
It’s in our nature to look down a bit on the generation that follows our own, says the neuroscientist. “Socrates was already doing it 400 years before Christ. He called young people lazy, stupid, rude – just like we do.”
When puberty begins, around the age of ten, the hormones in the body will increase twentyfold. Crone: “You’ll never experience such a hormone storm again in your life. We see the strongest mood swings between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, with a dip in self-esteem at fifteen. Hormones have a huge effect on the brain, but brain areas that help to put emotions into perspective, such as the prefrontal cortex, are still fully developing.”
Teenagers can be euphoric one day, and burdened by sadness and listlessness the next, cringe enormously at everything you as a parent say, and quickly feel deeply ashamed. “Around the age of fifteen or sixteen, teenagers suffer from an Imaginary Audience. They think everyone is watching and judging them. The brains of teenagers are focused on constantly mirroring themselves to peers. Remember that teenagers are also often happy and cheerful and can have the giggles because of their mood swings. That other side, the listlessness, is probably noticed by you as a parent sooner.”
You can’t be a Perfect Parent
Parents often find that puberty phase difficult. Their role changes. They feel less needed. In a sense, that’s true, says Crone. “But we know from research that the opinion of parents is still considered very important and relevant by teenagers. They still love you just as much. But they have to start mirroring themselves to their peers and that big world, instead of the small, safe, and often positive world in which you as a family have lived.”
Realize that you can’t do it perfectly, the researchers say. The curling parent who removes all obstacles from the path does their children no service; it can undermine self-confidence and independence.
Crone: “We live in a society full of performance pressure. You can also make mistakes as a parent. Parents who have attended a lecture often ask afterwards: ‘Will it ever be like it used to be?’ It won’t be, but there will be a new phase that is also beautiful. Your relationship changes and your role changes. Even if you still always see that little one.”
Admire the Flexible Brain of a Teenager
The brains of young people become more efficient in a short time, but are not yet in a fixed pattern. That has advantages for creativity and curiosity, Crone knows from her own research.
“If your sixteen-year-old nephew says while slumped at the dinner table that he is not impressed with how the democratic system works now, you can also admire that. It belongs to that phase of life to critically question established social ideas and to bring about change. That is not stupidity or unrealistic idealism.”
The current generation of young people talks more easily about their problems than the generations above them. To dismiss this generation of teenagers as snowflakes – people who melt at the slightest adversity – is really not justified, says Crone, and moreover not scientifically justifiable.