THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN AND A GRANDMOTHER'S WISDOM

Once upon a time there was widespread belief that the human brain was fully developed by the time a child reached five or six years old. We know, for example, that the amygdala, the part of the brain that is responsible for instinctual reactions such as fear and aggressive behavior, does fully develop early. However, thanks to new technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), neuroscience researchers have discovered that, although 95 percent of the brain’s architecture is formed by the time a child is six-years-old, that there are significant changes that occur around the time of the onset of puberty, between 10 and 13 years of age.

Scientists have discovered that during adolescence there is a rapid increase in the connections between the brain cells and refinement of brain pathways and that these changes are critical for the development of coordinated thought and action. As my colleague Craig Haen put it, “In the teen years, young people are going through a software upgrade, neurologically, in which circuitry is being consolidated, networks are being reorganized, connections are being made stronger and more expedient and unused pathways are wearing away.”

Changes in the brain take place in the context of many other factors including early childhood experiences and environment. Scientists are continuing to look into the development of the brain and the relationship between the changes taking place, behavior, and health.

The stakes are great during the teenage years. There is a perplexing contradiction between adolescents reaching the peak of physical health, strength and mental capability and, at the same time, facing greater risks and hazards than ever before. Parents walk a fine line between supporting their children’s independence and protecting them from harm.

Child and adolescent brain studies affirm that the brain is hard-wired for social interaction and for attaching and bonding with caregivers. Despite all the scientific advances, according to leading brain researcher Jay Giedd, people might be disappointed to know that the “best advice we can give is things that our grandmother could have told us generations ago: to spend loving, quality time with our children.”

Teenagers hunger for significant relationships with adults who care about them. This belief has been validated by social scientist Ellen Galinsky, who interviewed more than a thousand children and found that teens longed for more time with their parents, even when they seemed to be pushing them away. Galinsky concluded , "Even though the public perception is about building bigger and better brains, what the research shows is that it's the relationships, it's the connections, it's the people in children's lives who make the biggest difference.”

If a child’s job is to explore and a parent’s job is to protect, understanding changes in adolescent brain development offers an opportunity to support and create environments that promote positive peer experiences, where teens can safely explore and experiment and avoid behavior that can harm themselves or others.

https://longislandweekly.com/adolescent-brain-grandmothers-wisdom/

Andrew Malekoff is the Executive Director of North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center, which provides comprehensive mental health services for children from birth through 24 and their families. To find out more, visit www.northshorechildguidance.org. 

EVERY PARENT'S NIGHTMARE

EVERY PARENT’S NIGHTMARE…NEWSDAY, July 23, 2011

By Andrew Malekoff

I have not been able to stop thinking about Leiby Kletzky, the 8-year-old boy taken from a Brooklyn street corner earlier this month and brutally murdered. My boys are now in their 20s and they are not Hasidic Jews, but there is something about Leiby's photo that reminds me of them when they were children.

I get chills when I recall a day when I took my boys to the multiplex theater at the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa. Darren was 3 and Jamie was 7. After a movie, we went downstairs to Nathan's for hot dogs and French fries. When we were finished, Jamie told me he thought that he left his Batman toy in the theater upstairs.

Thinking I would offer him a bit of independence, I said, "Do you think you can go get it and then come back down?" He said yes and stepped on the upstairs escalator. Darren and I waited. After a few minutes, I thought he might be having a hard time at the theater. My eyes scanned the mall. When he didn't return after perhaps 10 minutes, my worry turned to fear.

I picked up Darren so that I could move quickly (or was it so that I wouldn't lose him, too?) and I started to search. Jamie wasn't at the theater. I was frantic and looked into every store. I was sweating profusely and my heart seemed to beat through my chest. My imagination took me places I had never been before; places like the one that found Leiby Kletzky.

Then I approached a mall staff member, who led me to the security office. The security man spoke to someone on his walkie-talkie. After just about a minute, Jamie walked into the security office with a staff member. I picked him up and hugged him for a long moment.

For me, it was a moment of profound relief. Jamie seemed happy that we were together, but not upset. The time we were separated was not the eternity to him that it was to me. (He even found his toy.) I think I had emotional blinders on and don't recall if I even asked where Jamie was located.

Sometimes I remember that experience for no reason immediately evident to me. Other times it is triggered by a news story with a bad ending. Recalling those 20 or 30 minutes brings back some of the same physical sensations: The hair on my neck stands on end, a chill runs up my spine and my heart pounds.

Maybe I can't stop thinking about Leiby Kletzky because of that frightening experience at the mall. If those moments had turned into a lifetime of what the Kletzkys now face, I don't know how I would have survived. Yet, somehow, people do survive traumatic grief. Maybe it is their faith.

I heard that there were children in Leiby's close-knit community who questioned the presence of God when the boy's fate became known. How could they not? And, while I ask myself this same question that a child asks his parents, I can only hope there is a better place somewhere beyond our world that isn't so capricious and merciless to even the most innocent and precious among us.

PLEASE DO FIGHT WITH YOUR TEEN-AGERS

PLEASE DO FIGHT WITH YOUR TEEN-AGERS

By Andrew Malekoff© 2011

Teen-agers enjoy a good “fight” with adults who do not feel a need to dominate and are willing to listen. As children progress from the “earthbound” quality of concrete thinking to the “intergalactic” quality of complex thinking, they become capable of formulating contrary-to-fact-hypotheses, of leaping with their minds here, there and everywhere. Herein lays the source of teen-agers’ growing ability and fervor for challenging others’ ideas, beliefs and values and for engaging in furious debate, often to the dismay of parents, teachers and other adults.

One day when my son Jamie was 14, he told me that he was thrown out of class. He had argued with his Spanish teacher about how she had graded a test. One of the questions had a visual component. The class was asked to write, in Spanish, a sentence describing what they had observed in a drawing that depicted two women who were simultaneously holding a gift-wrapped package. Jamie told me that his answer was, “Una mujer está recibiendo un regalo” (A woman is receiving a gift). When the test was returned his answer was marked wrong and points were deducted. The correct answer, the teacher said, was, “A woman is giving a gift.”

He argued that the drawing could be interpreted both ways, giving or receiving. The debate was heated. The teacher was flustered. Jamie pressed on, continuing to argue his point until he was silenced by the teacher

He told me that he then raised his hand. The teacher ignored him at first. Nevertheless, his long outstretched arm became an exclamation point, punctuating the space in the classroom.

“JAMIE WHAT IS IT?” she shouted. He responded, “I just like to hear the sound of my voice.” His enraged teacher then banished him.

British educator Janet Batsleer has spoken eloquently about the hostilities and complicities that young people have experienced in schools. She refers to “Those people who have ‘spoken out of turn,’ or who have not spoken ‘properly,’ or who have learned carefully exactly when to speak in order to please the teacher, or who have become afraid to speak for fear of being spoken about as a problem or in even more hostile ways.”

We should welcome debate from young people. Reasoned arguments gradually replace simple reliance on authoritative pronouncements by grown-ups.

As a child’s brain develops, opposites such as good and bad, or black and white, or yes and no, can be held in one’s mind simultaneously, enabling an individual to examine subtle shadings of disparate ideas and to tolerate the ambiguities that are generated by thoughtful debate. This “quantum leap” in thinking enables one to consider many viewpoints at once, use inductive and deductive thinking to reason and test reality by challenging contradictions and inconsistencies.

Young adolescents find that they can begin to argue for argument’s sake—for the fun of it. When we engage with them in spirited debate we help them to cultivate critical thinking, which is essential in order for a young person to become an active citizen in community affairs; to learn when to stand up and speak out.

So, please do fight with the teen-agers in your life. Fight with them to help them to flex their cognitive muscles and fight with them for fun. If you can avoid becoming defensive or intimidated, you might be pleased to discover that from the same source of adolescent combativeness and intellectual intransigence spring the seeds of inspiration and idealism.

To be published in the Long Island, NY Anton Newspapers in November, 2011.

“Will all parenting experts please leave the room!”

“Will all parenting experts please leave the room!”
By Andrew Malekoff © 2010

“We have a new word in our lexicon – parenting. The word refers to what I call the technology of being a parent. The increased usage of the term is most unfortunate, and I avoid it wherever possible.” So says La Jolla, California psychologist Richard Farson in his new book, “Will all Parenting Experts Please Leave the Room!” (Western Behavioral Sciences Institute: http://www.wbsi.org/farson/books.htm).

In my unvarnished view of parenthood, it is less a well-posed, still-life portrait and more a roller-coaster ride; harrowing yet fun, with unexpected twists and turns, ascents and descents. You experience anxious anticipation and vertigo-inducing surround-sound. Sometimes, however, it is not so exciting - more like a crawling commute in rush- hour traffic, enervating, meandering, puzzling and endless.

As many of us know, parenthood can bring confusion, misunderstanding and doubt. This is an inescapable reality for most parents. Parenthood is rarely neat. It is more abstract than still life, more jazz than classical. Yet, according to Richard Farson, there is a myth that one can learn parenting techniques and all will be good.

Many times parents feel helpless because their kids make noise and move about, laugh and have fun at what feel like the most inopportune times. Raw parenthood looks like it just crawled out of bed; it is a half-eaten slice of pizza, a shirt hanging out, a chair leaning back, a runny nose, mismatched socks and a dripping ice cream cone. And there are moments when it can also be compared to a sunset. Parenthood is an adventure.

At times, parents feel ashamed and apologetic; and yet, the unspoken message from the “experts,” according to Farson, is that “somewhere there exists a person, an expert, who has it all figured out and knows how [be a perfect parent]. No wonder parents feel vaguely incompetent at the very time they think they are acquiring helpful information.” Farson offers readers a fresh, if controversial, view on the absurdities and paradoxes of parenthood, in the face of a consistent downpour of advice on what has come to be known as “parenting.” For example, he says, “Most parents love their children. Most would die for them. Paradoxically, however, as a society we do not honor or respect or even like our children. We indoctrinate, patronize, ignore, mistreat, segregate, dominate, prohibit, compel and incarcerate them.”

Among his riffs is one on the myth of quality time and the belief that how much time we spend with our children is less important than how the time is spent.

Farson reasons that genuine quality time should not be measured in discrete bursts of undivided attention. Quite the contrary he says, “It is the time when you don’t have to do anything with your child, when the child simply knows that you are around and available. It is taking comfort in the simple awareness of each other’s presence. It is allowing yourself to be angry with your child, in the knowledge that there will be time to get over it and make up.”

His advice about the myriad of books on how to have quality time with your children is to ignore them. My advice: don’t ignore Farson’s book. It will make you scratch your head. It may even make your head hurt and make you feel angry. At just 107 pages, and, with such chapter headings as “Parenting is Impossible” and “Don’t Pity the Latchkey Children,” this anti-parenting parenthood book is a must read.

And, if you are really looking for a headache, you can then read Farson's “Will All Marriage Experts Please Leave the Room!”

To be published in the Long Island based Anton Newspapers in May 2010.