Too often people think stereotypically about the period of
adolescence as a time of vulnerability, risks, and problems. You may even be
guilty of this. How often have you participated in or overheard conversations between
parents that sound something like “my daughter is headed to middle school next
year” and the response is “yikes, good luck!”?
But the reality is that adolescence is the healthiest period
of the lifespan, explains Professor Ronald Dahl, MD, a pediatrician and
developmental scientist, on the latest episode of our Critical Window podcast.
“Almost everything you can measure—if you go from elementary school across
adolescence into early adulthood—gets better,” says Dahl. “Strength, speed,
reaction time, reasoning abilities, cognitive skills, immune function,
resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and most types of injuries.”
This sounds like good news, but we also know that “the
overall death and disability rates jump 200 to 300 percent between elementary
school and early adulthood.” Dahl explains that those jumps don’t come from “mysterious
medical illnesses.” Instead, such increases result from teens still learning
how to control behavior and regulate emotion. Therefore, we see “increasing
rates of accident, suicide, homicide, depression, alcohol and substance use,
violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders, sexually transmitted diseases,
health problems related to risky behaviors broadly, [and] worsening obesity.”
Dahl calls this the “health paradox of adolescence.”
In this episode of Critical
Window, Dahl breaks down stereotypes and popular assumptions about
adolescent health and focuses on the opportunities to support positive
development and shape the future of young people.
Here are some takeaways:
Adolescent brains do
what they are supposed to do.
“Adolescent brains are very well adapted to the tasks and
challenges of adolescence,” says Dahl. “They’re focusing and prioritizing
learning about their complex social world and their place in it as an
individual.”
Dahl gives an example of how understanding this shift in
priorities can shape learning environments. “If it’s a way to increase [their] social
world, adolescents will master the learning very rapidly. If they’re being told
that they need to learn something because it’s going to help them sometime in
the future, then their brains may not look like they work very well. But it’s
not because something’s wrong with their brain.”
Adolescents are passionate.
“We’re doing a disservice to the brain if we think that it’s
all about rational thought,” says Dahl. The adolescent brain is figuring out
what matters and what doesn’t matter and is establishing heartfelt goals and
priorities that can lead to positive impact, especially when given proper
support. “Feelings can be smart, wise feelings,” says Dahl. “We can have
passions for good causes and purposes that guide our value systems, and shaping
these systems are as important as shaping the ability for the thinking brain to
suppress emotions.”
Adolescents aren’t
“just being impulsive.”
Increasingly, adolescents seek sensation, something that
Dahl describes as “having an appetite for, an inclination for excitement,
arousal, novelty, bursts of unusual experiences and feelings.” This isn’t “just
being impulsive.” This is what drives kids to learn and explore. “A huge number
