It’s a fact: teenagers do bone-headed things that anyone in his right mind would never do. They do stupid stuff and when you ask why, they say something like, “I didn’t think.”  No kidding.

This sort of behavior can land them in real trouble, if it hasn’t already. So why are teens so thoughtless and what you can you do to help them wise up?

First, teens may look nearly grown up but their brains are still developing. And the part that is developing the most at this age, the prefrontal cortex, is the area necessary to evaluate a course of action and see consequences. This part of the brain isn’t fully online until late adolescence – about age 18 for girls and as old as 22 for boys. So when teens say they “didn’t think” or they “didn’t know,” they’re right. They didn’t really have even the ability to think things through or to know what might happen.

Second, teens are blinded by their own over-confidence. The under-development of their prefrontal cortex permits teens to inflate their own abilities and to think they’ve got everything under control. Teens can’t see all the details and possibilities so success at any venture seems simple to them. They feel perfectly capable of mastering any challenge, any challenge at all.

Finally, teens simply lack experience. We adults know where the pitfalls are. We understand that a child by the side of the road might dart in front of our car, so we slow down. We know water that is deep enough to dive into might still hide rocks, so we check before we jump in. We know that being asked to “take care of” something valuable for an acquaintance might mean that it was stolen and we know that receiving stolen property is a crime.

Teens don’t know everything, though they sometimes think they do, and they don’t have the brain power to think things through very well anyway. What can we do? How can you help your teen wise up?

1. Casually clue him in. Your teen may not want your advice, so you need to almost mention it just in passing. You might share with them your own dumb mistakes and let them laugh at you. You might wonder out loud about the possibility of danger, and let them realize on their own that danger was possible. Keep the lines of communication open without preaching or treating your teen like a child.

2. Play the role of spotter. Remember when your kid was little and you stood under the jungle gym, ready to catch her if she fell? You need to play this role again now, the role of spotter. Your teen will get into trouble that a more carefully thinking person would avoid. You need to stand underneath, ready to catch her and set her on her feet again. Don’t blame her for her thoughtlessness but help her make amends if need be and learn from her mistakes.

3. Continue to give your teen chances to make decisions. It might seem easier to just keep your teen indoors for several years until his brain catches up with reality. But the thing about brain development is that it requires experience to happen. The only way to learn how to see the possible consequences of an action is to have to make decisions that involve possible consequences. The prefrontal cortex requires exercise to develop. Make sure your teen’s brain gets this exercise.

And remember one more thing. While teens do make thoughtless mistakes, you do too. We all do. Each of us probably made a dumb error as recently last week. It’s easy to judge our teens’ stupidity as just that – stupidity – and forget that we made that error ourselves when we were fifteen and we made a different error of our own this morning. Life is full of uncertainty. We’re all learning. Love your teen.

© 2012, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved.

Like you’ve never done it.

Like you’ve never said, “If you eat your vegetables, you can have dessert.”
Like you’ve never said, “Get an A in math this term and I’ll give you five bucks.”
Like you’ve never said, “You can stay up 15 minutes later tonight for every run you score in softball today.”

There’s no denying it. When we can’t think of any other way to get our kids to perform, we sweeten the pot. We offer a bribe. And usually our bribes work. Kids rise to the bait and do what we want.

So what’s so wrong with that? If bribes work, why do they make us feel queasy? Why do experts – yours truly included – warn against relying on bribery to motivate children? Where’s the downside?

There are a couple problems with making a practice of offering bribes. Bribes stunt a child’s development as a fully-functioning person and, at the same time, bribes undermine your authority as a parent. Not exactly what you expected. Let’s look more deeply.

When we offer a bribe as a motivator, we change the dynamic of the experience. Now the person who is being bribed is acting, not based on his own values and interests, but based on the values and interests of someone else. He has been transformed into a puppet. He is not a fully-functioning person. This is why offering a bribe and taking a bribe are crimes for adults.

For children, who are learning how to make decisions intelligently, being bribed short-circuits this development. It detours the growth of the prefrontal cortex – the area of the brain needed for judgment and weighing consequences. The child who does something because she will be rewarded is unable to see past the reward to the true values the rewarded actions support. She is a less-moral person.

The second problem arises the day she turns the tables on you. Sooner or later your child will say, “Eh. I don’t care about that reward.” Or, she will start to run the bribe herself. When you ask for something, she will say, “What will you give me if I do?” Now her compliance is the bribe; she will do as you ask only if you agree to pay out. In both these cases, you are put in the position of having to up the ante to get the same results as before. Now it is you who are being manipulated.

While rewards work okay once in a while, they do not make a sound long-term strategy. Eventually the reward is no longer enough. Along the way, your child is diverted from growing into someone who can motivate himself.

If you tend to use bribes, it will take some effort to get out of them. Your child is used to being rewarded and is used to you making all the decisions. You must switch to a system in which your child rewards himself.

So ask him, “When you finish all your vegetables, how will you reward yourself?” Maybe he’ll say he gets dessert but maybe he’ll say he gets to play on the computer for half an hour.

Ask her, “When you work hard and get an A in math next term, how will you celebrate?” Let your child make the plan; if you make it, it is you creating a reward not her taking charge. Keep in mind that getting an A in math may not be entirely within your child’s control. Help her to set contingencies in case she misses her goal.

And ask your child, “When you score a run today, how would you like to celebrate that?” Maybe your child will say only that he will do a little dance on home plate. Maybe he will plan to high-five everyone on the team. Who knows?

The point here is that rewards that are important to the person (researchers say “salient”) are more effective than rewards set by someone else. Everyone wants to be her own boss and control her own fate. Children too. And setting goals for oneself and monitoring one’s own progress are key life skills.

Don’t derail these skills by manipulating bribes. Instead, guide your child in managing himself.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.

You know how this goes. You warn your kid about dangerous stuff or even just things to avoid, only to find they completely ignore you. They even act surprised after-the-fact that you ever warned them at all. Your warnings seem to fall on deaf ears.

There’s a reason why. Negative consequences are processed differently in the brain than positive consequences. The reasons why a risky behavior might be fun are more available to a child’s mind than the reasons why it might be dangerous. This fact can help us help our kids.

Researchers at University College London asked 59 people aged 9 to 26 to estimate the likelihood that any of 40 bad things would happen to them. The bad things ranged from stuff like getting head lice to breaking an arm or being seriously injured in a car accident and included stuff like, appendicitis, bicycle theft, home burglary, knee surgery, losing a wallet, sports injury, bullied by a stranger, and being stung by a wasp.

After they guessed, they were told the real odds of each event.

Then the participants were asked to guess the odds once again. Everyone was good at reporting odds if the risk was actually less than what they’d originally thought. But they were less good at remembering the odds of bad events that were more likely than they’d thought before. And the younger the child, the worse they were at remembering worse odds.

The problem wasn’t a matter of poor memory, since better-than-expected outcomes were remembered just fine. The problem was a matter of brain development. Positive information is registered in many different parts of the brain. Negative information is registered primarily in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain responsible for weighing consequences and making judgments. However, the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until late adolescence, even as late as the mid-20s.

So now what? How can you warn your child about risks and have those warnings be remembered? Researcher Tali Sharot says simply, “We learn better from good news than from bad news.” So instead of telling children about bad outcomes, emphasize good ones.

• Instead of warning about the dangers of smoking, point out that non-smokers have better lung capacity and do better at sports.
• Instead of carping about the need for fruits and vegetables, point out that the anti-oxidants in fruits and vegetables promote smooth skin.
• Instead of fussing over your child’s driving, remind her that good drivers pay less for car insurance.

Admittedly, we still will worry and warn. We’d feel that we weren’t being good parents if we didn’t. But we shouldn’t be surprised that children don’t seem to process our warnings or apply them at the critical moment. This we should expect.

We have to be prepared to make our warnings over and over, and in as positive a way as we can. Nothing we can do will hurry brain development. Keeping our kids safe and healthy until their brains catch up is still a parent’s job.

© 2013, Patricia Nan Anderson. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ask for Dr. Anderson’s new book, Developmentally Appropriate Parenting, at your favorite bookstore.