Teenage Brains

I suggest all parents of adolescents, especially adolescents that seem to be pushing your buttons, pick up a copy of the October 2011 National Geographic and read Beautiful Brains.

We do not do ourselves any favors as Mormon parents when we expect our teens to be rule-following, seminary-attending, testimony-having, sexually-repressing individuals that do not doubt, question and or rebel in any shape, form or fashion.  We not only set ourselves up for unrealistic expectations and devastating power struggles, but we also set our teens up for inappropriate shame and an inability to do the important identity work so important of this developmental stage. 
Please do not misunderstand – I am not saying we should let our teens do whatever they want or that we should not provide reasonable structure, family activity and a strong value system.  I am just challenging some of the paradigms we have regarding expectations and how to make cognitive sense of things when they don’t go as rosy as one would have hoped.