What is Going on Inside Your Teen
Jan 14, 2025
What the H*LL is Going on Inside Your Teen - Chances are every parent of a teen or tween has spent time recently pulling their hair out, shaking their head in confusion, or trying to keep a straight face about something completely nuts. Why do they act this way?!?!
While the teen brain is very complex, three main things can help us understand what’s going on in there:
Worth it!
Kids can make such risky decisions that it makes sense when parents think they’re not considering the danger of their choices. Not true! Teens do weigh their decisions and are aware of risk. However, the adolescent brain emphasizes benefits and opportunities, so the result of most teens’ cost/plus analysis is: “worth it.” This is why more info on the risks of vaping is unlikely to sway your kid and why my son is convinced he would win a wrestling match with a bear (seriously). Remember how invincible you used to feel? Thanks, adolescence!
Not my fault!
It blows my mind how innocent teens can make themselves no matter how badly they’ve messed up. They’re master externalizers because their ego is exploding, constantly emphasizing their separation from the world around them. This over-focus on external circumstances can lead to anxiety and defensiveness or denial when confronted with their culpability. Looking too closely at mistakes and shortcomings can be really threatening to a budding, fragile ego identity.
I want an Oompa Loompa NOW!
Teenagers are very focused on the immediate; they don’t easily access the big picture or long view. Grounding a kid for a year or taking their phone away for a month is likely to backfire because a year or a month feels like a lifetime to them—they’ll never make it, so why try?
So kids are their most selfish, impulsive, cocky, volatile, emotional, and dangerous in this time of life. WHY, OH WHY, would nature do this to them (and to us)?! Without these changes, our kids wouldn’t have the courage, self-belief, trust, adaptability, and stamina to go out and become grown-ups.
Think about what will happen at some point in this crazy process: your kid who has never lived alone, learned their ass from their elbow, or existed apart from you is going to skip la-dee-da into an unpredictable dog-eat-dog world, and they are going to KICK ASS. Nature had to give kids a buttload of bravado and arrogance, or we’d be a species of inbred crybabies!
Knowing all of this can make your kid’s behavior more understandable, but it probably won’t make it less scary or show you how to respond to it. That’s where I come in. It’s my job to help you through the emotional roller coaster of parenting teens and to teach you the skills needed to respond to their choices effectively. You can build connections and move your child’s behavior in the right direction during this time. Set up a Discovery Call with me, and I’ll show you how.
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