Drugs Alcohol our Kids and Their Brains-Some Answers

I have been under the impression for a long time that our kids issues relate to how we raise them and counsel them and whether our family life is stable and supportive. But, now I have a completely different view. I just returned from a trip to Virginia where I attended some amazing seminars that finally gave me answers as to what is going on in the heads of our kids.  I believe that what I learned needs to be shared so that we all understand our kids better and can do a better job helping them survive into adulthood.

There are two gentlemen from Duke University, Aron White and Jeff Georgi, who have studied adolescent behavior and have shed a lot of light on what is going on in our kids heads and why it seems behavior has been changing over the past several decades. If your like me you've been scratching your head when you look at today's young adults. They look more mature than we ever did. Thirteen year old girls sometimes look like mature woman. On the other hand even at age eighteen or older they seem lost regarding their future. They have a hard time committing to work or school and me and my friends constantly complain that today's kids seem immature compared to our generation.

Well guess what? They are! And, there is science to prove it and this science makes everything make sense. My goal is to give you a synopsis of what these two men from Duke taught me last week and using some of my own inferences I want to help us all to understand our kids and how we can help them make good decisions.

First, we need some definitions. Puberty is the physical changes we experience that turns our bodies from child like into an adult with adult sex characteristics that enable us to reproduce. These changes include our appearance with hair growth, voice changes, breast development, menstreuation, etc.
Adolescence is the changes our mind makes that moves us from childhood and dependence on our parents to adulthood with independence and the ability to raise our own families. Adolescence is characterized by anxiety, loss of interest in family, a need to develop a pack of friends, desire to experiment, boredom, lack of insight of the future, etc.. Particularly interesting is that during adolescence our ability to learn and remember is the best we will have in our entire lives and simultaneously our brain is firing off signals that cause us to be impatient and anxious.

Is it just me or do we all remember our parents complaining that our generation seemed to be unfocused, lazy, reckless etc.? Much to my dismay I recall having very similar conversations with my friends about the current generation coming of age. So, is this because as we get older we get more critical or is something really going on here? Surprisingly, something is actually going on. Over the past 60 or more years the age of puberty  is getting younger and younger. Sixty years ago onset was around twelve years old in girls and now it is at age nine. Therefore, our observation that these twelve year old girls look like young woman and nothing like the twelve year olds when we grew up is actually correct. Ironically, while puberty is hitting at a younger age adolescence has been turning on later. The result is that sixty years ago adolescence kicked in around age twelve and ended around eighteen now it starts around age fourteen and doesn't completely end until close to age twenty-five. I'm not making this stuff up there are actually publications on this.

So, think about this, our kids look more mature at a younger age but their brains are less mature until an older age. Not only is their brain less mature but it is taking dramatically longer for them to emerge from this. The result is that every new generation is taking longer to grow up and act like the adults they look like.

Now I'm going to really scare you. A whole bunch of studies have been performed on adolescents regarding drugs and alcohol and the impact on their behavior and development. First, remember their brains are firing off the anxiety neurons so much that they feel anxious and at the same time very bored. As an answer they use alcohol or drugs which calms down those hyperactive neurons and this makes them feel really good. The effect is way more powerful  than it is on us adults. At the same time the circuits in their brain are trained to learn. So their brain hardwires in that drugs or alcohol will make them feel really good. At the same time they are imprinting that this is an activity they can share with friends and creates very positive memories.

Unfortunately, the frontal lobe of the brain, the part that lets us look into the future and anticipate the consequences of our actions is still incompletely developed. Therefore, they don't "see" that they could hurt themselves by their actions.  We all remember the feeling of invincibility we had as teenagers. This is actually a biological result of incomplete development of the brain.

On the  other hand, teens have a very well developed cerebellum which controls balance and coordination. Therefore they can consume far more alcohol or drugs than an adult brain and still walk and look normal. On top of this their brain does not get sedated from alcohol but rather stimulated. So unlike us parents who have a couple glasses of wine and want to go to bed our teenagers are ready to hit the town.

Some of us wonder if maybe we could help our kids by teaching them to use alcohol responsibly. Maybe they would learn moderation and appropriate behavior. We have been told for years that the Europeans don't have alcohol issues in their youth and there isn't an enforced drinking age there. Sorry, the research shows once again that our perceptions are wrong. The European teenagers have a much higher rate of dangerous drinking than Americans with double the rate of drinking to get drunk. Studies also show that teens who are introduced to "responsible" drinking in the home have a much higher likelihood of getting drunk as well.

The reason for this again points back to how their brains are developing. They have an enhanced response to alcohol with fewer side effects and a poor ability to foresee consequences. So, now we ask, What should we do?

We asked the lecturers this very same question. They were very clear. First of all, these guys aren't Puritans. They understand that alcohol and recreational drug use can be done responsibly. But, it can't be done responsibly until after someone has begun to emerge from adolescence around age 21. Therefore, they recommend that we do everything in our power to keep our kids from using drugs and alcohol. They even recommended routine drug screening or hair samples since it can show drug use 90 days old and the test can't be beat. They didn't say what age to start but I suspect probably in middle school.

This seminar was very enlightening to me because it basically killed all of my assumptions. I now know that my kids are maturing slowly and are very susceptible to the effects of drugs and alcohol and I should be vigilant in trying to keep them from using them. I will probably consider routine drug testing. I figure that if a test is positive it gives us a chance to talk about what's going on. And, preferably, if negative it gives my kids the excuse to say "no" when peer pressured.

What do you think? Have I presented anything here that might change the way you raise your kids?