Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain
Daniel J. Siegel, 2013
Teenagers usually know what they are risking, and they take the risk anyway. Psychiatrist Daniel Siegel explains that this has less to do with hormones than with how the brain rebuilds itself in these years. You'll learn why bans work poorly, what happens in your head during an outburst, and how parents and teenagers can stay connected when everything is changing.
Who it is for
For teenagers who want to understand what is happening to them. For parents who no longer recognize their child and are afraid for them. And for adults whose lives have turned into routine.
Teenagers need more than to get through adolescence: they need to make the most of it.
The boy in the sports car and a father's question
One day Daniel Siegel was out for a walk with his one-year-old son when he noticed a huge traffic jam on a street that was usually quiet. At home he learned that there had been a crash a mile away. Bill, Siegel's favorite teacher, had been killed. Bill was carefully turning at an intersection when a 19-year-old in a new sports car slammed into him. The young man was going at least 150 kilometers an hour. Two months earlier, the same young man had crashed into a tree on the same road, and soon after that his parents bought him a new car.
Siegel, an American psychiatrist, looked at his little boy and asked himself how to keep him from behaving like that in the future. According to Siegel, teenagers are stronger and healthier than both children and adults, yet their risk of serious injury or death is about three times higher than in childhood or in adult life. By adolescence, the author means the years from about 12 to 24.
Siegel argues against three myths. The first myth: hormones drive teenagers crazy. According to the author, behavior has more to do with how the brain is rebuilding itself. The second myth: these years just have to be endured. The third: growing up means getting by without adults. The author believes a teenager needs not total independence but a real connection with people.
The brain's rebuilding, Siegel says, brings four powers: strong feelings, a pull toward friends, a hunger for new things and bold, creative thinking. Each of them can do harm, and each can help. The book speaks to teenagers and parents at the same time. Ahead is the story of a girl who knew the risk and took it anyway, and a model of the brain in the palm of your hand. After that comes a skill the author calls mindsight, and an evening when Siegel himself said too much to his son. The very fact that you are opening a book about growing up shows the curiosity Siegel values so much in young people.
Katie knew the risk and went ahead anyway
Katie was 17 when she had her stomach pumped after a party where she drank seven shots of tequila and four glasses of wine. She had brought the hard liquor herself, and the party was at the school principal's house. A week later she was expelled from school. Siegel asked her whether she had thought about the consequences. Katie said she had, and that she understood what could happen. But the idea of getting drunk at the principal's house was just too tempting.
According to Siegel, teenagers usually do understand risk. The difference is in how they weigh it. The author has a name for this: hyperrational thinking. A person counts both the pros and the cons, but the pros weigh more on their scale. In the author's view, dopamine is at work here. It is the chemical the brain uses to send a reward signal. In the teenage years, Siegel says, the reward system works harder, like an amplifier that makes the reasons for doing it louder.
The scale tips furthest around friends. Benji, a friend of Siegel's son, was 13 when a group of boys in Spain started jumping into the sea from a 50-foot cliff, about 15 meters high. Benji jumped after them, hit the water the wrong way, struck a rock on the bottom and shattered his leg. Siegel asked whether he would have jumped if no one had been around. “Are you kidding? No way,” Benji answered. Neither Katie nor Benji acted in the heat of the moment. Both had time to think, but the thought of what their friends would say pushed the danger into the background.
With age, according to Siegel, gist thinking grows stronger: a person looks at the big picture and at what really matters to them. That is why a simple “don't” works poorly: it says nothing about what matters to the teenager. Scary pictures of the harm smoking does didn't stop teenagers. What worked was telling them that tobacco companies were brainwashing them for profit. Saying no to cigarettes became their own choice, made for the sake of what mattered to them, not an act of obedience.
The author's advice is not to put out the thirst for thrills but to give it a safe channel. On weekends he himself went skateboarding with his teenage son in a multistory university parking garage: down in helmets and knee pads, up in the elevator, and down again. The driver who killed Bill, on the other hand, was given a new car after his first crash. He got away with dangerous driving, and as Siegel sees it, that is exactly what pushed him toward more risk.
About the author
Daniel Siegel is an American psychiatrist who has worked for many years with children, teenagers and their parents. He came up with the idea of “mindsight” and raised two children of his own.
All books by this author: Daniel J. Siegel
Terms from the book
- Bill
- Dopamine
- Brainstem
- Prefrontal cortex
- Myelin
- Amygdala
- Insight
- Empathy
- Integration
- Attachment
- Mindsight: Siegel's own term, made from the words mind and sight. The ability to notice your own thoughts and feelings and to understand what is going on inside another person.
- Katie: A girl in the book, 17 years old and in her last year of high school. She was expelled after a drunken party at the principal's house. Siegel uses her story to explain teenage risk-taking.
- Hyperrational thinking: Siegel's name for the way teenagers weigh things up: a person sees both the payoff and the danger, but the payoff weighs more on their scale. It is an idea from the book, not a diagnosis.
- Benji: A friend of Siegel's son. At 13 he followed the other boys and jumped into the sea from a high cliff, and he shattered his leg.
- Gist thinking: Siegel's name for thinking that looks at the big picture and at your own values rather than at the payoff of the moment. In his view, it grows stronger with age.
- Limbic area: The part of the brain that lies under the cortex, the brain's outer layer. As Siegel describes it, this is where emotions arise. It also plays a part in motivation, attention and memory.
- Name it to tame it: A tool from the book: put your feeling into words so that it grows weaker.
- Sara: A girl in the book. She first came to Siegel at 12, and later she was afraid to leave for a college on the other side of the country.
- Time-in: Siegel's word for time, even just a minute a day, when your attention is turned inward.
- Wheel of Awareness: Siegel's exercise of about 20 minutes. Attention moves in turn to the five senses, to the body, to thoughts and feelings, and to your connection with people.
- Gail: A woman in the book who grew up with a father who drank. She made sense of her story and was able to give her son Steven solid support.
- Safe harbor: An image from the book: a place or a person you can come back to for comfort. Siegel pairs the harbor with a launching pad, from which you set out into the world.
- Earned security: What researchers call secure attachment that a person gains as an adult by making sense of a hard childhood.
- Steven: Gail's son. When his mother fell ill, he chose a college five hours' drive from home.
All terms
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