Understand How Teens Think

We want our children to make wise, well-reasoned decisions. Our desire to keep them safe drives our need to shape those decisions. How we talk to our tweens and teens can make the difference between whether they absorb our lessons or rebel against them.

Understand How Children Think

Young children see things as they seem. They don’t imagine themselves very far into the future, or foresee how their actions lead to future circumstances. They tend to think about how things affect them now. They don’t tend to see the complexity in situations or underlying motives of people.

Understand How Adults Think

Adults on the other hand see complexity. We can see into the future, and understand how things that offer immediate pleasure might have long term consequences. This is called abstract thought. Abstract thought can be highly protective to us because we are less easily manipulated and can consider the short as well as the long-term effects of our choices.

Highly Stressed Thinking

ALL people go back to concrete thought when they are highly stressed. When we stress out our kids, even those who have achieved abstract thought, they suddenly can only see what is in front of them. They lose the ability to plan ahead, to consider consequences, and to grasp the complexity of human behavior.

Understand How Adolescents Think

So, children think concretely, and nearly all adults can think abstractly. How about adolescents? They are thinking somewhere in between. Early adolescents are closer to concrete, and later adolescents may have fully reached abstract thought.

A Miracle of Adolescent Development

As tweens and teens begin thinking abstractly, their imaginations go wild, and they pose lots of not-so-easy-to-answer questions. It is a time when many young people reflect on large spiritual questions and seek ultimate truths.

As parents, we want our tweens and teens to learn from the positive experiences, but want to shield them from life’s painful lessons. We know people can mislead for their own gains. We know that exhilarating moments can lead to unforeseen tragedies. We know that “highs” may be fun for a few moments but can lead to addictions.

The Typical Lecture

“What you are doing now, let’s call it behavior A! It will very likely lead to consequence B! What were you thinking? And then consequence B will go on to consequence C, which almost always ends up with D happening! Here comes consequence E. Look at me when I’m talking to you! If you find yourself doing E, you could lose control. Then, depending on factors completely out of your control, consequence F, G, or H will happen. If I happens, Do you know what happens then?  You could die!”

What do they hear? “Blah, blah, blah…then you could die!”

When we lecture young people, they become frustrated because they can’t follow our thoughts. They hear our concern but don’t grasp the content of our message. We lecture to protect our children, but our noble intentions can backfire.

Deliver Information in a Format Teens Will Understand

Our challenge is to offer information in a way that helps our children absorb our messages and own the solutions. When we do this right, the lesson is more likely to be long-lasting and will reinforce their motivation to follow through on their plans.

Early adolescents (and stressed-out people) can better absorb information if it is delivered with a concrete mathematical structure – like 2 plus 2 equals 4. Add 1 and then you get 5. They can better follow our logic if instead of a string of abstract possibilities (A to B to C to D), the lesson is broken down into small concrete separate steps.

“I appreciate your desire to do A. But I am worried A might lead to B. Do you have any experience with something like that? Tell me about that experience. What might you do to make sure that doesn’t happen to you?”

Then allow the young person to reflect and absorb the lesson of B. Only when they really get B, do you bring up C.

“Do you see how B might lead to C? Have you ever seen that happen? What are your plans to avoid that happening here?”

Remain Calm and Guide Them if Necessary

And we must do all of this with calmness, even if we are full of terror. If you can’t be calm, it is not the right time to guide your child.

Excerpted from “Understand How Teens Think” by Ken Ginsburg, Founding Director of  the Center for Parent and Teen Communication and Professor of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Read the full post online.

Source: Center for Parent and Teen Communication | Understand How Teens Think, https://parentandteen.com/understanding-how-teens-think | © 2023 CPTC. All rights reserved. Retrieved April 2024.

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