Neuroscience, Teens and Organization

I should preface this entire blog with I am not a neuroscientist and much of this is gross generalized.

I just started working with a new family. Actually, I am working with the two young teens. One has a room that is filled with little “treasures”, small spaces to fit into, science experiments and describes the room is cozy. The other teen’s room has clothes everywhere including the floor (in fact, you would have to either walk over the clothes or move them to get into the room), open drawers and stuffed animals. Both are having issues in school as well – late assignments, missing assignments, poor study skills and a lack of prioritizing. The parents are at a loss.

Children are not mini-adults; their brains are different. Teens don’t yet have adult brains. They look like adults fully physically developed so why don’t act like one. It takes a long time for the brain to go from the brain of a child to the brain of an adult.

I love working with teens. They have many things going for them:

• They are physically stronger than most adults
• They are faster that most adults
• They are more resistant to disease than adults
• Some exhibit higher reasoning capacities than adults
• They are more creative that adult

However, the other side of the coin also means:  

• They are impulsive
• They have more emotional drama
• They make poor decisions
• Rates of death by injury for 15-19-year-olds are six times those who are 10-14.

Teens have a heightened interest in three aspects of life during these years.

• Novelty
• Risk-taking
• Interacting with peers

What is going on in the heads of teens? Well, neuromaturation. Basically, maturing of the frontal lobe and more connectivity of the brain. The growth of gray matter peaks at age 11 for girls and 12 for boys. What happens next is the most shocking part, parts that are used rarely are paired away allowing what is left to perform more efficiently.

The increased connectivity is building new connections. Neurons in a teen are twice as fast as in an adult, which allows them to learn quickly, however, it also makes them vulnerable to bad influences.

How does organization and time management fit in here? This is a time when teens need to practice using executive function skills. They may need to fail a test to learn to prioritize studying, they may need to lose their homework to learn to organization, they may need to lose their phone to learn that “place home for everything” is a good idea, they may need to lose a friend to learn to be flexible, they may need to miss a party with friends to learn to regulate their emotions when speaking with a parent or anyone, they may need to fail a chapter quiz in Language Arts to learn sustained attention when reading a class assigned book, they may need to get a detention to learn response inhibition so they don’t talk back to their teachers. We learn by failing often. Teen just seem to make more mistakes and bigger mistakes.

What to do for your teen?

• Be patient
• Talk about situations they may get into and make a plan beforehand
• Form habits so decisions don’t have to be made in the moment
• Talk to their teachers
• Talk to them daily