Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Tell Us about Our Kids

A mother paces the living room, waiting for her sixteen-year-old son to come home, hours past his curfew. When he finally saunters in, he answers every question with a blank stare, and finally dashes to his room and slams the door. The mother, stunned and angry, thinks, It's just hormones, right?Wrong. While raging hormones and an inclination toward rebellion are major players in the teenage drama, an area north of the gonads is directing the show: the brain. In "The Primal Teen," Barbara Strauch presents a fully accessible look at the cutting-edge science that is providing vital new information about what makes teens tick.Until recently, scientists believed the brain had largely finished its development by the teenage years. But research by leading neuroscientists now shows that the adolescent brain is an intensely busy work-in-progress, sprouting new synaptic connections and cutting back on others. This immense "rewiring" project helps to explain the swift mood changes, out-of-character responses and reactions, and even the acts of sheer stupidity that have puzzled parents throughout history. Strauch not only explains these breakthrough findings, she shows that understanding them can lead the way to a saner and smoother relationship between parent and child. Through interviews with teenagers and their families, she explores common challenges -- including why it is so hard to reason with teens, why teens can be so articulate and mature one day and so morose the next, why they engage in risky behavior, and why some kids breeze through adolescence and others struggle -- and offers practical, reassuring, and often unconventional strategies for coping with them.The soaring salesof books like Odd Girl Out, Reviving Ophelia, and Raising Cain demonstrate that parents desperately want to understand why their teens act the way they do. With its pioneering focus on the impact brain structure and development have on behavior, "The Primal Teen" is a major step forward in deciphering and dealing with the moody metamorphosis of the turbulent teenage years.