Innovative Web  Tool For Parents Of Teens, Tweens

For parents of teens, it often seems that their child has been captured in an invasion of body-snatchers, replaced by some creature they neither recognize nor comprehend. In a way they have, controlled not by an alien entity but the normal, if trying, burst of development inside their brain.

On June 11, on the eve of summer vacation, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA) launched “A Parent’s Guide to the Teen Brain,” a new multimedia tool to help parents make sense of their teenagers and better communicate with them.

This interactive, easy-to-understand site, www.drugfree.org/teenbrain, translates recent scientific findings on brain development into easy-to-understand tips parents can use to navigate the stormy changes of adolescence.

“What parent hasn’t had a teen exclaim ‘I’m grown, you can’t tell me what to do,’” said Jill Spinets, president of The Governor’s Prevention Partnership, the PDFA’s Connecticut alliance. “Now we know that in fact, they are not all grown up. The human brain doesn’t fully mature until the mid-20s, and the areas that govern judgment, emotions and impulse control are the last to develop.

 “Insight into why teens think and react the way they do helps parents understand what is normal and not, and provides direction into how to balance teens’ desire for independence with the supervision and guidance they still need,” Ms Spineti added.

Dr Brendan Campbell, MD, director of Pediatric Trauma at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and a member of the Governor’s Task Force on Safe Teen Driving, said that motor vehicle crashes involving novice teen drivers are more likely to involve other teen passengers, night driving, speeding, and driver error.

“Connecticut’s graduated driver licensing [GDL] law helps to reduce car crashes and having web-based resources to understand adolescent development will assist parents in supporting the GDL law,” he said.

The website was created in collaboration with Boston-based WGBH and the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, whose scientists and researchers specialize in substance abuse and addiction.