By Joan Ruddiman
For families in the throes of surviving the teenage years, any and all support is welcomed.
In the past month, parents, their teens and educators in this area were blessed with appearances by several noted experts who offered practical advice laced with chilling statistics on why we all have to take adolescent angst seriously.
Michael Bradley, a psychologist who specializes in counseling troubled teens and their families, spoke to parents and teachers at the Grover Middle School in West Windsor recently. For those who missed hearing this amiable, articulate man in person, run to get his books.
The titles reveal his gentle humor and his empathy for parents like himself who struggle with obstinate teens but also his wise understanding and compassion for these unlovely, unlovable creatures.
Mr. Bradley’s award winning, “Yes, Your Teen is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind” (Harbor Press, 2003), was followed by “Yes, Your Parents are Crazy! A Teen Survival Guide” (Harbor Press, 2004).
The content in both is similar, as it elaborates what Mr. Bradley says in his prepared remarks to audiences. However, the packaging is very different.
The points made for teen readers in “Yes, Your Parents are Crazy!” are cleverly punctuated by Randy Glasbergen’s cartoons. Even more effective, Mr. Bradley pulls from his extensive files including his own teen experiences for conversations with and comments by teens living the issues that worry all adolescents.
Mr. Bradley, like many others in his field, maintain two prevailing factors affect all teens, and nothing much can be done to change either.
The first is basic human cognitive development. Thanks to the work of Jay Giedd at the National Institute for Health, and others who have scanned and analyzed tens of thousands of adolescent brains, the results are in. What we have always suspected is now proven to be true beyond question.
Teens are unique. They do not process information, and therefore do not think, like anyone else on the planet except other teens.
Mr. Bradley begins his books and lectures with the facts on how the teen brain develops. The growing pains kids experience in their fast growing limbs is nothing compared to the impact of surging and crashing dopamine levels and hormones in their brains.
Moods swings, rages, impulsive/stupid actions, staying up all night and sleeping all day are some of the most noticeable (and annoying) affects of the growing adolescent brain.
Can we fix it? No, but Mr. Bradley gives both adults and teens the means to recognize and thus respond with more control.
The second, more frightening factor is our culture. Though the teen brain is what it is Aristotle ranted about silly, irresponsible youth we all know that by age 25 or so, the adolescent brain fully matures and sanity is regained.
However, Mr. Bradley echoing Madeline Levine (“Price of Privilege” reviewed recently in Book Notes) and many, many other psychologists today, is painfully aware of how this generation is “saturated with sex, drugs and violence.” It is not a sure bet that teens will arrive unscathed into adulthood.
”The world around them … a culture we created, is coming after them hammer and tong,” Mr. Bradley said and fully elaborates in his books.
It is, in a word, terrifying.
The research is impossible to ignore. Though birth rates among teens may be down, STDs have exploded. This generation of kids has bought into the re-definitions of sex as sold by society. Within the last eight years, Mr. Bradley has counseled pre-teen girls who engage in oral sex. Yet they deny being sexually active.
Forget women’s liberation. “Our girls today see themselves as the property of men.”
And the boys increasingly buy into the misogyny of film images and music lyrics. Violence against girls is at an all-time high.
There is much more bad news on how our culture is framing the values lack of values in our teens, which Mr. Bradley presents pointedly but compassionately in his books. It is worth reading both titles to see how he connects to parents and kids with examples and explanations that make sense to the adult brain and to the teen brain.
He offers no hope that the culture be changed, and is honest in his assessment that parents cannot control it. He shared the story of how his dad smashed his Doors album “the devil’s music” when he was a teen. Young Mike and his pals had no money to replace the album that played all the cuts that they would never hear on the radio. His dad eliminated that bad influence from his life.
But today, Mr. Bradley observes, “my son’s IPod holds over 2,000 songs” and like any kid, he can hear anything he wants through the Internet. There is no way for parents to screen what their kids hear or even what they see. In casual conversations, one friend who cares for her precious grandchildren frets over the commercials they see. In another, a dad shares that after watching three “family friendly” shows in primetime with his kids, he realizes that the underlying theme in each was about sex.
Mr. Bradley knows that “you can’t police the environment,” even when you are sitting right next to them. His suggestion, carefully developed for parents in his book, is “don’t control the behavior, go after the belief system.”
Our culture tells kids through thousands of words and images that “sex, drugs and violence is normal. We must awaken them to how insane it is.”
Mr. Bradley’s wisdom, which is acknowledged by reams of experts and an impressive array of awards, comes from years of work with kids in schools, his office and the Pennsylvania prison system. He is an astute researcher, observing and noting what works with aberrant behaviors and what does not work.
”The ‘get tough’ boot camps don’t work,” he says. Kids are scared in the moment, but the swagger and attitude come rushing back as kids seek to prove their toughness once they are back on their home turf.
What does work is building relationships. His many examples are hard to refute. Kids have a hard time holding out against adults who sincerely listen, care and are honest with them.
”Asking them questions, more than anything, changes kids’ behaviors,” as kids begin to reframe their beliefs drilled into them by a sexually charged, drug laden, violent world.
Here’s the good news. “The brain is a miracle of nature.” It does grow up. But as it is growing, teens are struggling to pull away from parental controls to establish their own identity.
More good news: “They do respect you.” Don’t be afraid of conflict; “reframe it,” says Mr. Bradley. Realize and respect that kids are “breaking away” as they “give birth to the adult in them.”
Stay calm, he advises, and stay firm. Remember that your teen is playing with an undeveloped frontal lobe so the thinking part of his or her brain really is not working fully. What does drive the ship are chemicals that trigger impulsive and often really stupid behaviors.
Help them think, since we have the fully developed adult brain but don’t do the thinking for them.
Questions, conversations all as quietly delivered as humanly possible helps kids learn how to re-think the gross propaganda around them, and how to make responsible decisions.
Some quick tips from the doctor and dad who fights these battles daily:
”Drop your voice it is hard to yell at someone who is responding quietly.”
”Avoid conversations in the morning when their brain is not awake and as they come in from school when they are physically and emotionally tired. Do open up conversations around midnight when they are starved for human interaction. They are awake, rested and ready to talk even to a parent!”
”Talk in the car. Kids, boys especially, really do not like people looking at them. So drive and listen.”
”Say what you mean, and mean what you say one time. Believe it or not, they did hear you the first time and repeating the refrain just makes them shut down.”
Parents, grandparents, teachers any adult who has to interact in any way with teens need Mike Bradley.
Teens really need him.
So get the books.
One last bit of comfort from Chapter 9 in his book for parents, the “Ten Commandments of Parenting”:
Number 10: “Know thou, this too shall pass.”
Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.

