Understanding the Teenage Brain

Madeleine Inkin is a clinical child psychotherapist, specialising in neurodiversity, and a co-founder of Tassomai. She recently spoke to Tassomai about the neurological changes that young people are going through during their GCSE years to give parents a biological and psychological insight into exactly what is happening inside their child’s head…

Every year I ask myself: are the teenage years really the best time for our students to be doing such big exams? I think about this as I negotiate the distress and bewilderment most of my young clients’ experience. Is it really appropriate for them to be doing life-defining examinations while they’re still changing and developing so much? 

Let us look at the developmental changes that are occurring in our beloved children… 

Madeleine Inkin is a contributor to Tassomai’s GCSE Survival Guide, a free 28 page handbook, full of practical tips and expert advice to help families navigate their way through GCSEs. Download your copy of the GCSE Survival Guide here.

The Adolescent Brain 

Adolescents seem to “behave” their feelings, they act them out – they hover in corridors in groups, neither in the room nor out the room, neither present nor absent. It is up to us as adults to help put feelings into words. You can try this yourself, try putting your feelings into words: I feel lost at the moment, I feel hopeless, I feel anxious, I feel angry, I feel restless, I feel, I feel, I feel. You can’t go wrong – you feel what you feel – it’s not right or wrong. I call it “Leading with the I…”

As parents, it’s best to keep away from any judgmental comments. Your child will likely express diametrically opposed opinions in the same week, sometimes contrasting emotions in the same sentence. If your young ones feel judged they will quickly go into a shame response which is often displayed and acted out as anger or as a physical or emotional withdrawal. Then they are bewildered and confused about what has happened and why you do not listen or understand them. This is normal.

Young children learn how to behave within the constructs of a family and school life. Then the teenage brain kicks in and their ideas and behavioural constructs are challenged; they can become uncommunicative, emotional and unpredictable. This is not just a surge in hormones, neuroscience has shown this is not true. Transforming from child to adult is no easy feat – it is a journey through new discoveries and these discoveries bring new behaviours, new depths of emotions, new attitudes, and new experiences.

Their growing brains are being completely rewired, completely re-written. And they don't stop developing at 19 – they keep developing and changing well into their mid-twenties.

What is actually happening?

Brains take longer to mature than research originally thought. New neuroscientific research indicates that our brains are about 95% of their full-size by six years of age – that is just the size of the brain, not the connections inside the brain. The adult brain will evaluate and look at consequences before embarking on choices, using the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for impulse control, executive functions, behaviour and personality. Simply put, this area chats via its neurons with other regions of the brain.

The thing is, your child’s brain doesn’t quite work like this yet. Their prefrontal cortex may not be fully developed until their mid-twenties, and their synapses, the lines of communication between the different areas, are still growing and beginning to specialise.

As an adolescent’s brain keeps developing, its neurons begin to speed up. This process is like the neurons are growing speedo swim caps, and once they are fully covered and streamlined they move faster. This helps adults make fast decisions – but your beloved teen’s brain isn’t fully formed in this way yet.

Conflicting changes

All of these changes occur incredibly slowly, over a period of at least 10 years. They begin at the back of the brain where the oldest and most fundamental parts of the brain work, and slowly work forward to the more advanced and complicated areas. The prefrontal cortex is the last to be hooked up and shaped. So it's important to keep in mind that just because your child binge watched Friends the night before an exam, it doesn't mean they are stupid or lazy. Their brain is just not finished yet, meaning they have very little idea of consequences.

To make things more complicated, although brain building is beginning to peak, it is also when the brain starts being thinned out; we start losing connections that we don't use enough. This process is called 'synaptic pruning’. This time is often referred to as 'use it or lose it' meaning that this is an especially important time for adolescents to use their brain. Learn, investigate, play an instrument, play sport, learn a language, keep learning something new. By doing these things you will be helping to hard-wire those synapses and give their brain topiary a lovely lasting shape. 

This part of the brain is, to me, one of the most important as it handles good judgement, concentration, organisation, emotional regulation and behaviours such as empathy, and yet it is the part of ourselves we develop last of all. Sadly, we start limiting our adolescents' choices at the age of 11 and continue to limit their academic decisions and preferences until they are pruned to a specific interest by the time they are 18, all before their brains are fully developed.

So, I think it’s fair to say that teenagers are really going through it during the time when they’re expected to sit their GCSEs. Try to keep these developmental changes in mind as you watch them grow and learn over this period. Make sure they have some downtime to explore and connect with the world around them, and to simply relax every so often too. 

I’m not sure thinking about their underdeveloped prefrontal cortex will necessarily help you in the midst of your next battle over homework or tidying their room but I hope recognising and accepting that they’re growing and changing all the time will help you to accept that they aren’t necessarily being ‘difficult’ for the sake of it, they’re just growing up.

- Madeleine Inkin