Understanding the teen brain – What are they thinking?


The brain is the organ in your body that no one really understands. It is like a wonderland of electrical pulses that tells the body exactly what to do, what to think, and what to choose.

Teenagers may look like young adults, but because the part of their brain that makes judgments, evaluates risks and controls impulses isn’t full developed, they act in certain ways that don’t really make sense!

There are no instruction manuals to help you raise teens, but you can help by providing them with a great education. The Assisted Learning Centre in Fish Hoek is a college that supervises and tutors teenagers from grades 8 - 12, take a look at their website for more information.

So, let’s go through the science of the teen brain and recognise the dangers and potential for the young adults in your life...

DETERMINE THE DANGERS: KNOW THE RISK BEHAVIOUR
Because a teenagers brain is still maturing, they are more prone to addiction than adults. Kids who drink alcohol before the age of 15 are five times more likely to develop alcoholism than those who begin drinking after the age of 21.

BEWARE OF DRIVING DISTRACTIONS
Teens are four times more likely to crash their cars than adults. According to studies, distraction is a factor in more than half of teen car crashes. Take a look at the graph below…


SET LIMITS
Kids average more than 10 hours of media time every day. That’s about 68% of the time they’re awake!

GET SOME REST
Sleep is essential for learning. Teenagers should get 8-10 hours of sleep. The perfect amount would 
be 9.25 hours.

Did you know? Teens who get less than six hours of sleep are more likely to perform poorly on tests.

PROMOTE THE POSSIBILITIES
Teenagers actually have a better memory. Incidental memory peaks at about the age of 12 and then continues to decline through adulthood.

USE IT OR LOSE IT
As teens learn and experience new things, they will continue to make and build new brain connections.

RECOGNISE POTENTIAL
Since a teen’s brain is still changing, there’s high potential for increasing IQ. Once you understand the mysteries of your teen’s brain, you can protect them from bad behaviours and help them benefit from their amazing potential to learn and mature.

Make sure to read and go through this to try and crack the code and solve the mystery to why teenagers act the way they do!

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