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"It's so unfair...!" (Teenage angst)

rynner2

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Hormones are not the only problem for surly teenagers
By Nic Fleming and Roger Highfield

(Filed: 08/09/2006)

Teenagers are sulky and inconsiderate only because their brains are going through a period of rapid change, researchers said yesterday.

Tests have shown humans do not fully develop the ability to empathise with others until adulthood, possibly explaining why adolescents often live up to their surly, selfish stereotype.

Brain scans show that teenagers hardly use the area of the brain that analyses other people's emotions and thoughts when considering a course of action.

Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, who led the work, said society should be slower to hand out Asbos to teenage boys because they were not wholly responsible for their actions.

Speaking at the British Association Festival of Science in Norwich, Dr Blakemore said: "Teenagers' brains are still works in progress. My research suggests it's not just hormones that cause teenagers to be their typical selves, but it could be the way their brains are developing as well. They're profoundly different in certain parts of the brain, and those parts are invariably the ones involved in making decisions and knowing the consequences of your actions."

Scans showed that adults used the brain's medial prefrontal cortex area much more than teenagers. This is associated with higher-level thinking, empathy, guilt and understanding.

Dr Blakemore said "Handing out Asbos that can end up in a criminal record to people who through no fault of their own are programmed to be perturbed is something that we should question."
http://tinyurl.com/ms55v

OMG! :shock:

Does not intelligence come into this somewhere?

(At least the Darwin Awards celebrate the demise of those whose stupidity proves terminal.... :twisted: )
 
Teenagers act as they do because they are given permission. Examining their entrails or brains for clues is no doubt a fine sport but no one had much to say about moody adolescents when they were routinely performing manual labour or serving seven year apprenticeships.

Self-obsession had no social arena and the whole awkward business of sexual maturation was regarded by most writers as essentially a bit dull. Shakespeare was unusual in giving us two memorable youths: Romeo who moons about in a romantic haze and Hamlet who hates himself, his horrid relatives and existence itself.

Yet it is only fairly recently we have taken to viewing Hamlet as a typical adolescent: for years his multiple dilemmas and angst were interpreted according to the doctrine of the Humours or psychiatry. As a royal with nothing much to do, however, he has a modern successor in our own dear sulky, awkward Prince Charles. The inferno of his hormones, one assumes, has long since died down and I've noticed little sign of mental development there in decades! :spinning
 
Isn't there a book about exactly this, called "why are they so weird", not published yesterday?
 
H_James said:
Isn't there a book about exactly this, called "why are they so weird", not published yesterday?

I'm getting really bad deja vu about this news story generally. I'm sure I've read something exactly the same in the last 12 months.
 
I concur. This story has been repated in the last 12 months.
 
I overheard a conversation while walking into work this morning...

A woman was telling her friend how she purposely pissed off both
of her teens so they would make friends with each other and team up against their mean old mother.

The person she was talking to replied with, "What a good idea!"

Never in a million years would I, as a parent, think of doing
something that devious and manipulative.

That being said -- has anyone tried it?

TVgeek
 
Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, who led the work, said society should be slower to hand out Asbos [sic] to teenage boys because they were not wholly responsible for their actions

I'd be interested to hear if Dr Blakemore actually said this or whether the reporters inferred it from the few few minutes they spent scanning the abstract of the lecture?

In any case, isn't there a slight difference to being a bit surly and self-centered, or even horrifying the old'uns by wearing outrageous clothes and listening to devil music - and let's be honest, we were all like that once - and making other people's lives a living hell because... well, I don't know why really.

Sorry, but teenagers know exactly how it feels to be the other person - otherwise what would be the point in rebelling? - but the vast majority also know where to draw the line and aren't druggies/rapists/muggers/insert your nightmare here/ bastards. Those who choose to cross the line deserve and need to be punished. As perhaps do their parents and teachers, but let's not open that can of worms here!

I'd stop here before I go into full Grumpy Old Woman mode, but just can't resist one last off-thread rant... "Asbos"... when did "Anti-Social Behavioural Orders" become a word? Will it, in time, loose the capital A, or are the readers of The Telegraph hoping it will become a capital offence?

Jane.
 
And the really awkward teenagers cpouldn't be tested as they refused to wear the brain scan head gear as it didn't have the essential trendy brand logo to be seen wearing.

-
 
...society should be slower to hand out Asbos to teenage boys because they were not wholly responsible for their actions.

Surely the main point of Asbos isn't to punish the perpetrators of anti-social behaviour but rather to protect the community from the annoyance that they cause?

Suppose that my neighbour makes an excessive amount of noise every night until the early hours of the morning. Whether he's 17 or 77, the effect on me is just the same.

I dare say that a philosopher could make a very convincing argument that free will is an illusion and so therefore my neighbour should not be held responsible or punished for his actions. But that isn't going to help me sleep at nights, is it?

Still, I daresay Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore doesn't live in the kind of neighbourhood where that sort of thing is likely to be a problem.
 
TVgeek said:
A woman was telling her friend how she purposely pissed off both
of her teens so they would make friends with each other and team up against their mean old mother.

The person she was talking to replied with, "What a good idea!"

Never in a million years would I, as a parent, think of doing
something that devious and manipulative.

That being said -- has anyone tried it?
Yes - in spades!
Mum reports sons' crime to police

Police have praised a Gloucestershire mother who reported her teenage sons after they mugged a pensioner.
Christopher Young, 16, and his younger brother Shane, 15, robbed Helen Rogers, 75, of £80 in cash as she was walking home in Moreton-in-Marsh in January.

The boys' mother, Jeanette, overheard the victim's daughter talking about the attack in the shop where she worked and recognised her sons' descriptions.

She contacted the police and the two boys were arrested and charged.

Christopher pleaded guilty to robbery at an earlier hearing. His brother denied the attack, but was later convicted.

Following court hearings, Christopher was sent to a young offenders' institution for five years with another two years on licence while Shane received a two-and-a-half year sentence.

A Gloucestershire Police spokeswoman said: "We will always support parents if they feel they need help to prevent their children from going off the rails."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/glou ... 327178.stm
That should 'piss them off' pretty thoroughly! :D
 
Having substitute-taught for middle-schoolers (ages 12-15) I can affirm that They Are Not Like Us, especially when operating separately from their families. Sudden wild fits of laughter, violent mood swings of all sorts, inability to concentrate or make a simple connection or "suck it up" from a minor slight that happened to them in the morning -- even when honestly trying to. By adult standards, they're not entirely sane. But would you be, if you were operating with half a brain that's half adult and half child at the same time?

Oh, sure, I know about the manipulative ones and the consciously disruptive ones. There are plenty of those. But in any given class I could usually identify a lot of kids whose behavior was just -- odd. Unpredictable. And I'm sure that, five years down the road, they were all fine.

It's comforting to think that weird teen behavior is all an artifact of upbringing. But I've made the acquaintance of numerous kids who were moderately well-behaved up until age 12, acted like raving loonies for the next few years, and after that were moderately reasonable again. If it all boiled down to upbringing alone, I doubt that they would have straightened out again.
 
mejane1 said:
H_James said:
You bunch of old fogeys! :roll:

Tsk, kids today have no respect :roll: :lol:

Jane.

Go to your room now young man...and don't even think of slamming those doors behind you :twisted:
 
By adult standards, they're not entirely sane. But would you be, if you were operating with half a brain that's half adult and half child at the same time?
We used to get kids like this when I worked at the college. There was a scheme to invite kids from local schools for a day a week to do metalwork etc. Of course the schools sent the ones they wanted shot of. No one wanted to teach them and I was lumbered with the job. I was told that they were a waste of space and unteachable.
To my surprise, this turned out not to be the case and many of them did remarkable work that I was told would be impossible.
I found that they had no concept of time and would stop work for no apparent reason. At times like this I would gather them around a table (for the benefit of onlookers) and pretend to be discussing a job, when we were in reality, talking about the latest film or UFO’s or whatever was the topic of the day. After the break they would return and continue working as normal. I had no serious problems with these kids who were said to be ogres and it seemed to me that they had been excluded for petty non-conformist reasons.
Many were on drugs – I mean the prescribed kind and the rest had refused to take them. They would say things like, “He’s on drugs, can’t you tell, the bloody zombie”.
 
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