Rather than just raging hormones, it's actually a restructuring o... by Daniel Siegel

Rather than just raging hormones, it's actually a restructuring of the anatomy of the brain.

Daniel Siegel

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Categorized in : Health

There's a change in what's called the reward circuit of the brain, so it influences both how we feel and how we think, basically, you're driven to try something new, even something risky.

If we try to just inform adolescents, it's not going to change anything because they already know-- it's this hyperrational thinking and this change in the reward system, so what do we do? You can give them tools to develop an inner compass for proper moral behavior. That inner compass can help prevent peer pressure from flooding them, and it can help prevent them from getting lost in the social media world.

An adolescent will reason in this way that says, ‘Well, if I drive a car a 100 mph on this surface street there's probably a 40 percent chance I'll get hurt, but a 60 percent chance I'll just have fun.’ So the answer is, ‘It's most likely that I'll just have fun, so I'm gonna do it.’ And they don't care about the information they know.

We know now the heart isn't just a beating organ pumping blood. It actually has a kind of brain around it, and the intestines too, they're not just digesting food— they actually have all these neurotransmitters. There is literally information giving you a heartfelt sense and a gut feeling.

You want to connect with your adolescent and find out what was actually going on— and then try to redirect them in a very supportive way. Saying what the moral thing to do is, but realizing because of their brain remodeling, it isn't just a matter of giving them some kind of punishment because that actually doesn't work. It's about communicating with them, and teaching them the skill of thinking through a problem.