"Sound of silver talk to me
Makes you want to feel like a teenager
Until you remember the feelings of
A real live emotional teenager
Then you think again"
LCD Soundsystem
So, I was teaching a class last week, and that song came on, and we all had a good laugh.
I don't have children, partly because I remember what a nightmare of a child and adolescent I was - with those 'real live emotional teenager' issues.
Yet, I survived.
Talk to a lot of folks who are in that struggle - they are dealing with their adolescent kids, dealing with their own 'left-overs' of adolescence, or for some, just seem kind of energetically stalled there, even two decades later.
I get it - it's very real. And, it's very visceral...
it's also part of nature.
I don't have children, partly because I remember what a nightmare of a child and adolescent I was - with those 'real live emotional teenager' issues.
Yet, I survived.
Talk to a lot of folks who are in that struggle - they are dealing with their adolescent kids, dealing with their own 'left-overs' of adolescence, or for some, just seem kind of energetically stalled there, even two decades later.
I get it - it's very real. And, it's very visceral...
it's also part of nature.
“Puberty is everyone’s first experience of a sentient madness.”
Adam Phillips, Psychoanalyst
That means, the way I read it is that you get to have your own foray there, but if you're really fortunate, you'll get to experience that madness again, in the form of your own children.
What a trip! And, it's exactly what nature intended for us... it's just part of the brain chemistry and how we grow.
The prefrontal cortex has not yet finished developing in adolescents. It’s still adding myelin (the fatty white substance that speeds up and improves neural connections) and until those connections are consolidated--which most researchers now believe is sometime in our mid-twenties—the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain (known collectively as the limbic system) have a more significant influence.
As in 'animal, instinctual and reactive' influence - exactly the opposite of what most parents are hoping for at that time!
What a trip! And, it's exactly what nature intended for us... it's just part of the brain chemistry and how we grow.
The prefrontal cortex has not yet finished developing in adolescents. It’s still adding myelin (the fatty white substance that speeds up and improves neural connections) and until those connections are consolidated--which most researchers now believe is sometime in our mid-twenties—the more primitive, emotional parts of the brain (known collectively as the limbic system) have a more significant influence.
As in 'animal, instinctual and reactive' influence - exactly the opposite of what most parents are hoping for at that time!
This explains why adolescents are such notoriously poor models of self-regulation, and why they’re so much more dramatic--
“more Kirk than Spock!”
In adolescence, the brain is also buzzing with more dopamine activity than at any other time in the human life cycle.
Therefore, everything an adolescent does--everything an adolescent feels—is just a little bit more intense.
Therefore, everything an adolescent does--everything an adolescent feels—is just a little bit more intense.
“And you never get back to that intensity,”
says BJ Casey, a neuroscientist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.
Well, maybe on a really good night, with the right friends, and some LCD Soundsystem pumping, you might get close!!
Give thanks and praise, and enjoy!!
Give thanks and praise, and enjoy!!
