BodiMojo Blog

We at BodiMojo love reading about the latest developments about teen brain development.  One of my favorite books, The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries About the Teenage Brain Tell Us About Our Kids, by New York Times life science writer and a parent, Barbara Stauch, puts a lot of teen behavior into context and should be required reading.  Recently, the Boston Globe highlighted the work of Dr. Frances Jensen, a neurologist at The Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston.  See “Miracle Grow: The teen brain is a marvel of smarts: It’s just not filled in (yet)” by Elizabeth Cooney.

Dr. Jensen spends some of her time educating teens and parents about just what is going on structurally in the brain that explains some of the amazing and loopy things teens do.  She draws on her own experience of being a parent of teens, who seemed like aliens when they became teenagers.

“What were you thinking?” is the common mantra of parents, teachers, and even BFFs.  Really, the question is not what but how do teens think. And that’s complicated, indeed.  NPR interviewed Dr. Jensen and her sons earlier this year, and is a good listen (only five minutes). The podcast gives an interesting perspective from the sons – giving a glimpse of life with a brain doctor for a mom. She also talks about the effect of alcohol and drugs. For instance, the effects of pot can last days and can also foster addiction as the reward system in the brain is learning to adapt to substances while a lot of neural wiring is taking root. Bottom line, the brains of teens are still a work in progress – and aren’t fully developed until about 25!  I’m sure that explains some things for those of us old enough to reflect on our college days and our 20-something phases. Learning to treat your brain with care is an important message for teens and young adults.

As our team has tested BodiMojo.com in some local high schools over the past, year, one thing our team has learned is that when you lecture kids about all this cool brain research the response is, well, predictable.  Paula Kweder, a health teacher at Framingham High School, commented, “You know what the students say when we teach on the brain and addictions? ‘That’s not my brain on drugs!’”

We’re up for the challenge, along with Jensen and other educators, on spreading the message on the teen brain.  To take some of the serious out of a very serious topic, we’ve just added a new interactive tool, Headspin, that covers some of the major maturational issues teen boys and girls deal with:  acne, body changes, brain, sleep, and of course, moods. We also have a bunch of articles on teen development. Check them out.