lescence’ is a harmful and unnecessary
product of a faulty culture, not of a faulty
brain,” Epstein states.
TWEENS & TEENS
— by Myrna Beth Haskell
Getting a Grip on Behavior
Stephen Wallace clarifies, “The fact
that teen brains may make young people
more susceptible to poor decision-making
doesn’t mean they are destined to make
bad choices.” He explains that parents
need to step in to provide judgment when
it comes to health and safety issues, but
they can facilitate a more collaborative
approach otherwise.
It Must be
Neurological!
Understanding
Teen Behavior
M
any parents would prob-
ably agree that their
teen’s clothing and music
choices are strange at times, but most
find ways to deal with these kinds of is-
sues. However, when a teen behaves like
Pollyanna one moment and the Wicked
Witch of the West the next, and then has
the audacity to claim her mood is some-
how her parent’s fault, it can be difficult
to be diplomatic. Teens can be reckless,
self-centered, impulsive, and impatient.
It is no wonder an otherwise calm and
reasonable parent can lose her cool.
How does a once predictable and
well-behaved child turn into an erratic and
irritable stranger? Hormones might help
to explain mood swings, but adolescent
angst is much more complicated than that.
Does the developing brain have something
to do with a teen’s inexplicable behavior?
It must be neurological… right?
The Teen Brain
Some experts point out that neuro-
logical studies help explain teen behav-
ior, while others claim a teen’s culture
and environment have more to do with it.
Phillip Zoladz, Ph.D., an assis-
tant professor of psychology at Ohio
Northern University, explains, “Teens
are impulsive and reckless, in part, be-
cause much of their behavior is guided
by more primitive, emotionally-driven
brain regions (e.g. hypothalamus, amyg-
dala). This stems from a less than ful-
ly-developed prefrontal cortex which
usually governs and regulates this type
of behavior. The prefrontal cortex does
not fully develop until one’s early to mid
20s, which explains why teens continue
to act this way until they are at least out
of college.”
54 WNY Family October 2018
Stephen Wallace, an associate re-
search professor and director of the Cen-
ter for Adolescent Research and Educa-
tion at Susquehanna University, agrees
that changes in neural development can
affect behavior. “During adolescence
dormant cognitive order gives way to
mind-numbing change as the brain liter-
ally prunes itself.” This leads to “higher
order” thinking skills, such as apprais-
ing, predicting, and evaluating. “The only
problem is that along with such transfor-
mation comes a temporary slighting of
the part of the brain responsible for judg-
ment,” he explains.
Some teens — despite their neurol-
ogy — avoid typical teen turmoil. There-
fore, experts have also studied how cul-
ture and environment influence adoles-
cent behavior.
Robert Epstein, Ph.D., Senior Re-
search Psychologist at the American In-
stitute for Behavioral Research and Tech-
nology and author of Teen 2.0: Saving
Our Children and Families from the Tor-
ment of Adolescence (Quill Driver Books,
2010), asserts that the kind of turmoil we
see in teens in many Western countries is
entirely absent in other cultures around
the world. He reports, “New research
suggests that teens who are prone to take
risks may actually have brains that are
more mature in some respects than the
brains of more passive teens.”
Epstein describes two social phe-
nomena that encourage adolescent angst.
The first is that parents “infantilize teens”
(treat teens