PARENTING
Being on the receiving end of attitude from a moody tween can be tough. Here’s how to help make this emotional time less stressful for you and your child. BY YUKI HAYASHI
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NE MOMENT your tween wants to cuddle with you on the couch and watch TV; the next, she’s giving you the hairy eyeball for asking who she’s texting. Who is this changeling that has replaced your sweet child?! Blame biology (in part, anyway).
BRAIN CHANGES As kids reach puberty, they experience a number of physiological changes. Besides the obvious physical developments, things are brewing on a hormonal level and their brains are still maturing. Production of the sex hormones, both male (androgens) and female (estrogens), increases during adolescence, triggering changes in the brain systems, including those associated with cognitive processing and emotion, says Cecilia Flores, associate professor in the department of psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal. “The prefrontal cortex is unique because it continues to develop until early adulthood and it undergoes dramatic changes in the organization of neural connectivity during adolescence,” says Flores. She adds
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that, when you combine a developing brain with fluctuating hormone levels, short- and long-term behavioural effects, such as changes in mood and emotion, are likely outcomes. But hormones are only a piece of the puzzle. “There’s so much happening in the early adolescent years; we can’t give it an assignment like ‘This is 20 percent hormones and 80 percent cultural,’ ” says Alyson Schafer, parenting expert, author and psychotherapist in Toronto. What is certain is that the combination of hormonal shifts, neurological development, physical maturation and evolving social dynamics packs a wallop. “Early adolescence is a stressful time,” says Schafer, who notes that many children in this life stage are still developing the skills to recognize, manage and express their emotions. The result is often a surly or teary tween (and sometimes both in the span of a few minutes). SUNNY TO SULLEN “I was expecting moodiness from my son, but what surprised me was the age at which it started,” says Samantha*, Toronto
mom to a daughter, 17, and sons aged six and 14. At 11, her oldest son began lashing out and mouthing off at Samantha and her husband, the stepfather he’d always been close with. The transition from a well-behaved, happy boy to a sullen teen was upsetting, she says. She even had her son visit their family doctor to ensure that depression or another issue wasn’t at play. “We knew the teen years would involve our son becoming more independent-minded and peerfocused, and that he wouldn’t want to spend as much time with us, but we didn’t expect him to be so mean. He said some really cruel things. Even today, everything I do is ‘stupid,’ and his stepdad can’t do anything right, either. He thinks we know nothing, and he argues every little point.” NOT COOL Samantha suspects social expectations are part of the issue. “There’s such a big break between being a ‘little boy’ and a ‘big boy,’ ” she says. “My six-year-old sees his friend and runs to give him a big hug, but my older son can’t do that with his friends because that would not be cool.” CANADIANLIVING.COM | JUNE 2015
