Why does a teenager do stupid things?
Modern children are people of a new world, and we, parents, have no choice but to learn to interact with them in a new way, guided not by vague "norms", but by an individual approach …
- The first day of the school year, and immediately blow - a letter from the headmaster with a call to the carpet. So what again? It seems so big, but the wind is still in my head! - complains the neighbor Nina.
Nina has three children, the eldest Denis is already fifteen. He entered puberty early and swiftly. The family has been living on a volcano for the past few years. The guy began to study worse, is rude, breaks down on the younger ones, the room looks like a battlefield, it's scary to enter. No requests or beliefs work.
Parents are regularly called to school for debriefing. Little things? Pranks? Regularity? Each time, parents worry more and more. The child grows, and pranks grow.
Nina and her husband are good people, pleasant, educated, love each other, do not quarrel, children are not punished. Normal family, normal school, normal life. What's the matter?
What's normal and what's not? About whom and what: child, family, society?
A norm is a certain rule or prescription that must be followed. Specific sample, range, average. In medicine - the balance of bio-psycho-social parameters of a person and the world around him.
In a word, this value is relative. Especially when it comes to children.
Adults evaluate children based on generally accepted canons of behavior, often not taking into account the individual characteristics of their child. In addition, the standard is often measured by the personal expectations and hopes of the parents themselves.
The child grows, his behavior changes, his skills and abilities are improved, and the parents' aspirations are transformed accordingly. It is touching when the baby eats with his hands, but the teenager is already expected to own a knife and fork.
It is important to remember that children not only develop at an individual pace, but also initially have different properties of the psyche, which determine the character and temperament of the child, his desires and needs, reactions and behavior.
To understand a teenager and solve a problem, you need to understand the reasons. When parents know what is happening with a child in transitional age, they are aware of his psychological characteristics, it is easier for them to navigate what is happening, to anticipate and correct many conflict and other critical situations.
Emotions
The transitional age is a section of the path between childhood and adulthood, as dangerous as a mountain pass. The body is rapidly changing, the adolescent's perception of himself and the world around him changes, biochemical processes in the brain become more complicated, properties and qualities inherent in nature develop.
Emotions are at the helm during puberty. Significant changes occur primarily in the limbic system and the adolescent brain stem. These structures are responsible for physiological and hormonal regulation, unconscious reactions, feelings and emotions, and influence decision-making.
Therefore, the mood at this age changes every second. Unbridled joy, irritation, aggression, complete indifference, hysteria and depression are the usual companions of adolescents. At first glance, innocuous remarks of adults can easily hurt, infuriate, provoke a violent reaction or protest actions.
Depending on the individual psychological characteristics, the reactions will be different. For example, adolescents with a visual vector are the most sensitive, they need attention and care more than others. And even when they want to seem mature and independent, coldness, indifference and caustic remarks hurt them painfully.
They perceive the inability to openly live their emotions, rejected or ridiculed love, and prohibitions on self-expression in appearance and clothing especially painfully. Either they withdraw into themselves, or they go into open confrontation, they do everything in spite, winning their point of view with hysterics and eccentric antics.
Purple hair, tattoos and piercings, days of spree and threats to cut open your veins or drink pills in response to attempts by parents to reason or restrict - these are not "stupidity", but a desire to defend yourself, a natural manifestation of natural properties.
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Instead of being intimidated by teenage emotionality, it is better to take her as allies. No moralizing will break through to the heart of a teenager like a sincere conversation. Be sincere, remember your throwing at this age, do not flirt - children feel the slightest falsehood.
You cannot limit the expression of emotions. A parent who knows the psychological characteristics of his child can adequately respond to any sensory outbursts. Listen, support, cry together, or shift attention to prevent tantrums.
The child must know that he is understood and accepted as he is. To feel that it is safe to be yourself, that his emotional instability is a temporary and natural phenomenon, that there are relatives nearby who will always lend a shoulder.
Reading classical literature helps to develop the sensory sphere correctly. Living the fate of the heroes, empathizing with them, the teenager learns to understand himself and other people, to respond appropriately.
For visual adolescents, a theater club can be an excellent opportunity to channel emotions into a peaceful channel. Trying on different roles, getting used to, feeling and expressing yourself without fear of being misunderstood or ridiculed - this is very inspiring and balances the general condition.
The appeal of risk
This is followed by transformations in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the development of rational and analytical thinking, imagination and speech, regulates conditioned reflexes and social behavior. A system of regulation and control is being formed that makes it possible to achieve the set goals, predict the results of actions, and calculate the consequences.
But emotions, coupled with the brain's "reward system", still outweigh. This system is controlled by dopamine. It evokes and "remembers" pleasant sensations associated with positive experiences, and thus motivates the adolescent to repeat the pleasurable actions.
Teenagers have lower average dopamine levels than at any other age, so they often complain that they are bored, they are burdened by their usual lifestyle, routine in the family and at school.
But when dopamine is thrown into the bloodstream, its concentration is briefly higher than in children or adults. One of the triggers for dopamine production is novelty. Therefore, teenagers are attracted to everything unknown. They see only the pleasant and tempting sides of the next adventure. The coming pleasure outweighs the consciousness, overshadows the danger, tempts to take risks: drag on marijuana, break the rules, exceed the speed limit, take someone else's.
All adolescents go through these stages of development. But the intensity of the manifestation of reactions is individual.
Risk, speed, dominance in the peer group are especially attractive to adolescents with a skin vector. Their desires correspond to the properties inherent in nature.
Energetic, agile, nimble - they have time everywhere, in a hurry to try everything, to be the first in everything. They know how to adhere to rules, organize themselves and others, value time, set and achieve goals. But in the process of development, one can often observe a kind of reverse side of innate properties.
It is adolescents with a skin vector who more often than others commit risky "stupid things": they overstep the boundaries of what is permitted, relieve the stress of petty theft, try alcohol and tobacco first, ignore contraception.
Very different motives for unnecessary risk in adolescents with a sound vector. Their "rash actions" are very deliberate. Since childhood, the sound people are busy looking for the meaning of everything that happens. How does the world work? where is the end of the universe? what am I living for? - questions that prevent them from sleeping peacefully.
By adolescence, the thirst for knowledge reaches its climax, and there were no answers, and no answers. Everything seems empty, meaningless, illusory. In an attempt to somehow "revive" themselves, sound engineers can give birth to ideas on the verge of reasonable: lie under a high-speed train, cross the motorway on foot, take a selfie on a skyscraper. But the most attractive thing for them seems to be - to escape into the parallel reality of a computer game or to change the very perception of life by "taking a dose."
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Dopamine levels are naturally raised by exercising. Especially team games, competitions, the opportunity to receive a real award, to be successful, to be a leader. For adolescents with a skin vector, sports are an ideal opportunity to show and develop their natural talents.
It is true for all boys and girls: hobbies based on interests - fulfillment, inspiration, excitement from doing what they love - raises the base level of dopamine, balances, and gives a feeling of satisfaction and joy.
But the development of abstract thinking helps to improve the control system, teaches you to calculate steps, anticipate dangers, and avoid risks. And here mathematics comes to the rescue. It would seem an abstract science, but with a huge practical effect.
Mathematics is even capable of pulling some sound people out of bad conditions, captivating with the magic of numbers and the harmony of laws, giving hope to find answers to how the universe works and what role we play in it.
Environmental influence
Tell me who your friend is and I will tell who you are!
A person is able to survive only in society. While the child is small, parents take care of him. They provide safety, satisfy all needs, feed, surround with love and attention. Gradually, the baby begins to perceive himself and himself and the world around him, learns to interact with other people.
In adolescence, the focus shifts sharply. What the family used to give the child, he tries to find in his peers. Their attention, recognition, and appreciation are becoming more important.
Puberty is a training ground before going on a big swim. Children work out their natural program, polish their skills, gain experience. Boys are ranked, defend their place in a team of equals, and integrate into the general system of interaction. Girls look closely at boys, experience their attraction to them.
Teens' brains continue to storm. The excitability of areas that respond to the assessment of others increases. Especially on the opinion and reactions of peers to the behavior, status, appearance of a teenager. All actions and decisions are now refracted through the lens of what others think. "Herding" at this age is due to physiology. What a child would never do alone in a group seems attractive.
To please friends or, conversely, not to stand out, to be like everyone else, teenagers sometimes do all sorts of stupid things: they act recklessly, forget about common sense, ignore potential danger.
The shy girl suddenly becomes covered in war paint and demands "an outfit like a friend's." A polite son in the presence of classmates begins to be rude to his parents. Yesterday, the open children in the yard turned into an evil group, bullying neighboring children. And at a disco, in a circle of peers, even the most reasonable one gets drunk to a coma.
Teenagers with an anal vector are especially susceptible to the influence of someone else's opinion. They always listen to the advice of more authoritative people. And since parents at this age lose their influence, such children sometimes blindly follow a group of peers, take an example from them, often not the best one.
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Parents are usually very painful to experience the separation of the child from the family. But this process is inevitable. The chick trains its wings to fly out of the nest one day into adulthood. You cannot limit the teenager in communicating with peers, but it is worth taking care of the right environment.
Development as opposed to
Another feature of childhood is gloating.
This ancient emotion was still inherent in primitive man. Developing from a balanced, unemotional animal, our ancestors at first had a fierce dislike for each other. Desires to take possession of the good of a neighbor, to snatch a tidbit were limited by the laws of the pack, as they threatened the species with self-destruction. Unable to openly profit at the expense of another, the ancient man learned to rejoice evilly at the involuntary losses of his fellow tribesmen. Gradually developing, humanity has come a long way from repressed hostility and malevolence to love and sincere joy for one's neighbor.
In their development, children go through the same path in a short time. Kids find it funny when a clumsy clown hurts himself, teenagers have fun when a peer “screwed up” in front of everyone. This is a natural stage of growing up. It is not natural if a person gets stuck at this stage, and an adult uncle relieves stress by laughing at videos where people find themselves in unsightly situations.
Therefore, it is so important from childhood to teach a child to empathize with others, to read good fairy tales, to pronounce the correct meanings. With a teenager, you can and should talk openly about people's feelings, explain that he himself could be in an unpleasant situation.
It will be good if you manage to captivate him with caring for someone: regularly call his grandmother, help an elderly neighbor with purchases, do homework with the younger ones. Good deeds develop the soul. A person becomes dear to those in whom he invests with all his heart. When you love people, you cannot harm them or rejoice at their failures.
New time - new interaction
The teenager is as open as possible to meet the world, curiosity is off the charts, the coming adulthood beckons and tempts. I would like to try everything, test my strength, try on different roles, check the reactions of others.
But at the same time, he is more vulnerable than ever, sensitive, psychologically and emotionally unstable. A flurry of hormones, new desires, unexpected experiences, the demands of the distant and the expectations of loved ones - press from all sides.
Puberty is akin to a laboratory experiment in adulthood. But it is important for the "laboratory assistant" to know that if he nevertheless "messes up" with reagents, there is someone nearby who will help prevent a dangerous explosion or clean up the consequences.
No matter how much one wants to seem independent, the teenager needs to feel the rear, the insurance from the parents.
Often the transitional age of children becomes a test for their parents. Misunderstanding, rudeness and rudeness, their "stupid antics" lead to despair. It seems that adolescents simply do not hear, they do everything out of spite, run into scandals, with all their might try to convict us of parental incompetence.
It is important to remember that our own condition, the situation in the family and in the world, problems at work directly affect children.
Desiring with all our hearts to "do good", we act in accordance with our desires and expectations, proceeding from our own characteristics, relying on our own experience.
Modern children are people of a new world, and we, parents, have no choice but to learn to interact with them in a new way, guided not by vague "norms", but by an individual approach.
You can uncover the secrets of the unconscious and understand the reasons and motives of adolescent "nonsense" at the online training "System-vector psychology" by Yuri Burlan.
Awareness is a process that changes perception. Without this, all the advice and methods of education seem abstract and ineffective. You can fully help and support only by understanding the nature of the child and yourself.
By interacting correctly, we help children go through the difficult path of becoming a personality, understand themselves, and avoid many mistakes.
Knowledge of psychological characteristics allows you to see a child behind the entire entourage of a transitional age, and not "stupidity". And then many problems are solved by themselves. Today it is stupid not to know!
