Bullying Prevention Awareness Month is over, and unfortunately it had a horrific run of high-profile tragedies: two teacher fatalities at the hands of students, several bullying-related suicides and attempted suicides, two Florida bullies charged with felonies, and a 14-year-old shooter charged as an adult. Once again, we’re left to face the grim reality that bullying is alive and well in our culture.
But there’s something that all of these cases had in common—and that the news media didn’t notice. All of the kids involved in these events were 12-14 years old.
No surprise, from a developmental perspective. The onset of puberty remodels the developing brain—both for humans and for many animal species—in a way that makes young adolescents especially sensitive to their social world. The reason for this can be understood through an evolutionary lens: Reproduction requires social skills—mating, parenting, fitting in to the social niche, coordinating to secure resources, taking care of the community, etc. So it would make sense that while bodies are being reshaped to produce offspring, brains would also simultaneously change to make us more socially receptive and active at that time.
How does puberty make teens more susceptible to bullying?
Recent research on the teen brain shows that adolescents, compared to both children and adults, are exceptionally sensitive to social dynamics. In brain-imaging studies, teen brains show more activation in regions that process rewards, motivations and emotions (the socioaffective circuitry in the subcortical, limbic regions) compared to children and adults. As a result, teens can feel more intensely, especially about social interactions. They more easily feel judged, threatened, and evaluated by others.
Read MoreCompared to my or my parents' generation, young people today are taking longer to reach adulthood, thanks to the social and economic changes of modern society. They take more time to explore relationships and to educate themselves for the complex information-based economy. Many face unemployment and have to live longer at home--and if they do work, it is not unusual to change jobs many times before they turn 30. Fewer are getting married and if they do, they marry later and have fewer children. Scholar Jeffrey Arnett, of Clark University in Massachusetts, now calls this period from ages 18- to 29-years old, emerging adulthood, a period so unique it deserves to be considered its own distinct phase of the lifespan.
Parenting this age group is also a new ball game. The biggest challenge--since emerging adults are in some ways grown up and in other ways not--is to figure out when to step in and assert parental authority and when to hold back...all the while remaining emotionally connected and respecting their growing autonomy. Arnett teams up with Oakland, CA writer Elizabeth Fishel to interview parents, professionals, and emerging adults, themselves, in order to gather the best advice on just where to find that parenting line... in areas of romance, job-hunting, communication, the Internet, and more.
I reviewed their book, When Will My Grown-Up Kid Grow Up? Loving and Understanding Your Emerging Adult, on the Greater Good Science Center website.
The important news is that our emerging adults still need our continued parenting. Rest assured, it does not mean that something is wrong. In fact when parents step in and help appropriately, their emerging adults do better in the long run--in their psychological well-being, their self-esteem, and even the standard of living they achieve.
Read MoreThe European Union and 127 countries think protecting disabled children's rights is a good thing to do, but the US Senate? Not. See the NY Times Editorial that takes the Senate to task.
"The new United Nations report finds that children with disabilities are the least likely to receive health care or go to school and are among the most vulnerable to violence, abuse and neglect, especially if they are hidden away in institutions because of social stigma or parental inability to raise them."
"The disabled children and their communities would benefit if the children were accommodated in schools, workplaces, vocational training, transportation and local rehabilitation programs."
Read MoreWe parents spend a lot of time, energy, and money to advance our children's intelligence. Researchers have just made that job a lot easier by identifying the four most effective things we can do before kindergarten to give our children the best start on their intellectual development.
Full disclosure, I'm not a fan of the focus on "intelligence." It is too narrow a concept--the tests for it are culturally biased in favor of White middle class kids, there are many ways to be intelligent and successful that the tests don't measure, it is not predictive of life success, and social and emotional skills are just as important as intellectual ability. That said, in the right hands an intelligence test can be a useful diagnostic tool, and the term intelligence offers one way to talk about intellectual, or I prefer the broader term "cognitive," skills. But I admit, I couldn't help but peek at this research if even to compare it against how I nurtured these qualities in my own children. A common theme jumped out at me, which I'll get to.
New York University researchers John Protzko, Joshua Aronson, and Clancy Blair looked at 74 interventions that were designed to raise children's intelligence from the prenatal period to kindergarten with the goal of uncovering the most effective ones. They included only studies that met the gold standard of research design--the randomized control study--and they published their findings in the January issue of of Perspectives on Psychological Science.
What did they discover? Four significant building blocks of intelligence in early childhood:
1. Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) supplements for pregnant mothers and newborns - IQ gains of more than three and a half points.
Pregnant mothers are encouraged to take many kinds of supplements but only LC-PUFA--found in foods rich in Omega-3s--raised young children't IQs, either when pregnant mothers were given the supplement or it was added to infant formula. The fatty acids are thought to be essential building blocks for nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex--and the body can't produce them on its own. One study showed that very young children who received the supplements for 8 weeks showed more activation in the prefrontal cortex than those who did not.
Read MoreWhen I was young, I worried so much that my parents called me Worrywart and bought me a stuffed toy with the same name. It wasn’t the best strategy—I was left feeling bewildered and wondering how to not worry—but what did parents know then? Research from the field of developmental emotion science finds that children who understand and manage their feelings are happier, have better relationships, and do better in school. But as a developmental psychologist I’ve often wished for resources to help parents deal with worrying in their children. So I was pretty excited when I found a lovely picture book recently at a professional conference: Is a Worry Worrying You? by Ferida Wolff and Harriet May Savitz. This light-hearted problem solving “manual,” based on good emotion science, introduces young children to the idea that worry may be more optional and flexible than they believe—and that they may be able to do something about the suffering it causes them.
As a parent, I’m moved by the realistic examples in the book; as a developmental psychologist, I’m impressed by the sophistication of the advice contained it its slim 16 pages.
The cover illustrates the idea that we are more than our worries, and that worry is something that comes to us like an unwelcome visitor: “It doesn’t ask if it can enter. It just barges in. And it will stay as long as you let it.”
The feeling and qualities of worry are named and described. One of the first steps in managing a feeling is to recognize it—name it to tame it, we say: "A worry is a thought that stops you from having fun, from feeling good, from being happy." "Anyone can have a worry. Parents. Teachers. Brothers. Sisters. Friends." "You can feel tired from a worry. Or sad. Or sick. A worry can feel like a heavy sack is on your back. Only it isn’t there."
Most importantly, the authors offer many strategies for problem-solving. Research shows that young children ages 3-6 tend to ruminate, or spin their wheels, so they, especially, can benefit from help in problem-solving. And older children who worry a lot believe they can’t solve the problem, though their problem-solving skills in other areas are equal to those of children who worry very little.
Read MoreParents often feel guilty or conflicted about offering help to their young adults, ages 18-34. Research shows that both parents and their kids can feel that help at this age is "abnormal," but the young adults who are helped do better psychologically and professionally in the long run than those who don't receive help. Attaining adulthood in today's complex and harsh economy remains a "joint enterprise" between young people and the adults who love them.
See my full article here as part of the Greater Good Science Center's focus this week on Generation Y.
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