Amruta Sawant | 
Whether you’re a kid that’s on the brink of entering the most buzzed about period of one’s life or whether you’re an adult, the thought of adolescence always manages to bubble you up with excitement or sends you into a rather thoughtful state.
Maybe you’re simply a happy go lucky teenager enjoying life and have teen friends with colourful personalities. You nourish the ideas that have been planted in your mind during childhood or you alter them. You’re in between being taken care of devotedly (pre – teenage) and being expected great things of (adulthood). It is one hell of a memorable roller coaster ride.
What makes teenagers more vulnerable than kids and adults:
Teenagers sometimes look perfect and settled on the outside, but what really does go on happening inside their brain? By the time you’re 5 or 6 years of age, you brain has reached 90% of its adult weight. You have the neurons in your brain developed, you understand touch and movement and are perceiving your environment. You have a sense of yourself and are taken utmost care of by your parents, peers as well as your teachers. You can communicate and make mental connections. This doesn’t remain the same once you start approaching teenage.
Adolescent brains undergo a process called pruning in which their brains get rid of extra or unused synapses (electric impulses or messages in between neurons) that get formed during their childhood. Synapses that are more active in the course of their life are boosted while the inactive ones are pruned away. As a result of this, teens make new mental connections during this phase. This much talked about saga between one’s childhood and one’s adulthood is inescapably important in the sense that young kids have a great deal of cushioning and adults have their environment in their reins but teens are simply out on a limb. Things can go wonderfully right or rather wrong.
They’re hence susceptible to extreme measures such as suicide or inflicting harm on others or even mental illnesses. The fact that they are slightly more mature than young kids sometimes shrouds parents’ ability to see them as they are: someone who may commit the same mistake that a kid does or someone who requires the same level of empathy that kids do.
Parents often find themselves facing the whims and fancies of their teenage kids and are found to be in a fix when it comes down to successfully dealing with them. It’s clear to teenagers and to those around them that they are indeed reveling in their newfound sense of independence.
You may find your 14 year old becoming a little more distant than usual and wanting more privacy. You may find your 16 year old getting a little more frustrated than usual at the prospect of exams or a little more excited than usual at the prospect of getting ready for attending a social gathering. It’s more than natural for teenage humans to have an underwhelmed response at things they would get excited about in childhood. In a parallel manner, they’re only acting on their hormones when they get overwhelmingly excited at things they wouldn’t even think of doing in their dizziest daydreams when they were a kid of say lesser than 10 years of age. The change is okay. What matters is how flexibly you deal with them. Note that these changes may or may not occur consistently across a spectrum of teenagers since everyone isn’t the same.
What changes do teenagers undergo?
A few situations that teenagers around the world find themselves in:
• Unpredictable mood
• An increased need of personal space
• Getting irritated and intimidated easily
• Mismanagement of emotions
• Persisting sadness
• Mental Depression
• Entering in fights
• Experimenting with clothes, hair and tattoos
• An urge to try alcohol or drugs under friends’ influence or simply by oneself for merrymaking
• Changes in their school grades
How can parents deal with their teenagers?
A few tips for the parents to effectively address and deal with their teenagers:
Lend an ear:
The least that anyone can do for anyone who’s in a need to be heard is to lend an ear. The same works with parents. One must listen to anything and everything that one’s child wants them to hear or know. Puberty especially is a sensitive period in which one’s body and mind undergo significant changes. If you raise your kids in a manner that enables them to share even the smallest of events and experiences, you’re setting up the stage early on for a cordial relationship. If you befriend them, you’ll find them pouring their heart out to you. Remember that it is essential and difficult to love anyone at their weakest. A healthy parenting will have teenagers talk about their personal, mental and emotional health more freely.
Take care of your own health:
Understand that your attempts to connect with your troubled teenager might not be initially fruitful. You’ll be talked back to, but you mustn’t let that cause you to relent or let frustration take a toll on your own health. You might meet with an angry or bitter response. Temporarily, teenagers must be given space and left alone until they cool down and can approach you with their problems on their own accord. Remember that no matter how harsh kids might get, they love you and they’ll suffer the direct consequences of you falling sick.
Give them space:
You must give them their me time. Setting boundaries with teenagers is helpful if you balance it by giving them an appropriate amount of personal space. Their sense of freedom shouldn’t come in the way of the values that make them human. Know when it is time to step in and intervene but also be prudent enough to allot them privacy and space to grow. Let them go to trips and social gatherings with their friends, but make them understand the importance of spending time with family too.
Stay Calm:
If the brain is a video game, the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex can also be regarded as the joystick or controller. It helps in decision making and keeping a track of impulses. Because the brain develops in the rear first and then progresses to the front, the prefrontal cortex is the last to be reshaped. Since the prefrontal cortex is still blossoming, teenagers depend on a rather temperamental and reactive part of the brain called amygdala. So, teenagers are ideally guided by the hormonal and fickle amygdala than the rather seasoned and stable prefrontal cortex. This causes teens to behave in a volatile manner, to pick up fights or indulge in overly adventurous activities.
What teens should know:
All in all, a combination of mental, physical and social factors has a say in a teenager’s life. An important thing that teenagers must know is that every sort of issues they face is capable of being overcome. They have a ton of problems, we know. Maybe they’re extending a helping hand to a teen friend in distress. One may not react to certain sticky situations that teenagers usually find themselves in haphazardly and handle oneself beautifully.
The thing to remember is that this chemical ride is worth it. After all, what matters is how we react to the idea of transition itself, especially when it is a mental plus physical transition that can make us or break us. Let it change you for the better so that you may blossom into a seasoned adult.