Anonymous wrote:I had two kids, owned a home, was married and had two college degrees at age 25. I’m 43 now, and I think this gives older teens (young adults) a pass to not have their crap together, or an excuse for lousy decision making. I’m not a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination, and raising teens is difficult, but I expect them to use their heads and rise to the occasion.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:There's a lot of space between "not 100% fully developed" and "whatever, nothing I can do."
+1
Yes, adolescent and young adults aren't fully developed. But they aren't completely immature, either. Parenting means, among other things, helping facilitate the development of reasoning skills and good judgment.
Anonymous wrote:There's a lot of space between "not 100% fully developed" and "whatever, nothing I can do."
The rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.
In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Teens process information with the amygdala. This is the emotional part.
In teens' brains, the connections between the emotional part of the brain and the decision-making center are still developing—and not always at the same rate. That’s why when teens have overwhelming emotional input, they can’t explain later what they were thinking. They weren’t thinking as much as they were feeling.