KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Episode 48: Navigating the Teen Brain. A Conversation with Dr. Dean Burnett.
Have you ever wondered about the hidden mechanisms of the teenage brain and how understanding them can shape a more empathetic and supportive environment for our youth? Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist and author, joins Kaity & Adriane to delve into the complexities of adolescent brain development and the critical role of parental influence.
What to listen for:
• Why teenage brains are wired for risk-taking and seeking new experiences
• How practicing good phone hygiene and setting a positive example can impact teen behavior and emotional regulation
• Why it's essential for parents to recognize and validate their teenagers' emotions, even when they seem exaggerated or trivial
• The difficulties parents face in understanding and empathizing with teenage emotions
• Insights into the development of the teenage brain and how this knowledge can guide parents in allowing teens to take calculated risks and learn from their experiences
So, what are you waiting for? Tune in to uncover the secrets of the teenage brain and how you can better support the young minds in your life.
About the guest:
Dr Dean Burnett is a doctor of neuroscience, an experienced postgraduate lecturer in psychiatry and mental health, and a sometimes comedian. And, most prominently, an internationally acclaimed science author, producing many books such as The Idiot Brain, Emotional Ignorance and Why Your Parents are Driving You Up The Wall and What to Do About It. Dean is in much demand as a science communicator and pundit, but as several of his books are aimed at teens and young people, he has also spoken at many schools and is involved with numerous projects regarding the mental health and development of young people. He lives in Cardiff, UK, with his wife and their two children, a chaotic beagle and a sociopathic cat.
Connect with Dean:
• Website
• Facebook
• Brain Yapping Blog
Mentioned in this episode:
• Brainstorm by Dr. Daniel Sieg
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
Important links:
• Connect with us on social
• Subscribe to The Sunday Spark
• Get our free literacy curriculum
Interested in starting a microschool?
Prenda provides all the tools and support you need to start and run an amazing microschool. Create a free Prenda World account to start designing your future microschool today. More info at ➡️ Prenda.com or if you're ready to get going ➡️ Start My Microschool
At the most fundamental level, it helps to perceive the adolescent brain as like the midpoint between the child and the adult brain, and that sounds like an obvious thing to say. But it's not just like a gradual shift from child to adult. There's this whole stage which is kind of unique neurologically.
Kaity Broadbent:Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling, the motivation, curiosity and mental well-being of the young humans in our lives.
Adriane Thompson:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves.
Kaity Broadbent:Welcome to the Kidnall podcast everyone. Adrienne, how's it going?
Adriane Thompson:It's good Today. It's good. I'm coming off of a sunburn, so I'm starting to peel, which is fun. Yeah, things are good. How about you? Everything's good. How's school for your kids going Well? I mean, this is a norm in my life and it's so interesting.
Adriane Thompson:When my son was young and I would get an email from the teacher, from the principal, I always felt like I was getting in trouble. Now I'm able to go. Okay, what needs of his are not being met? And so it's just a, you know, a common thing to get an email from the principal, and I'm very thankful that I have built a relationship and a connection with her so that you know I'm not feeling like I'm in trouble all the time. And so I got an email that said you know, your son has done this list of things.
Adriane Thompson:It's like being disrespectful, talking when he's not supposed to, and you know he got sent to the principals right away for that. And then he said something to a kid that insinuated something unkind. Then, you know, it was just like a whole long list of things, and I have been listening to him talk about a new learning coach that they have, and I'm trying to really listen beneath you know the words underneath the words, and we're going to talk a lot about this today because we're talking about the teenage brain and we're talking about the adolescent brain and why they do what they do. And so I was trying to listen underneath the words and it just is a lack of connection, a lack you know.
Adriane Thompson:This woman comes in, she's new and she just keeps telling me what to do, she's demanding me, she's doing this, you know, she's on her phone with, with students, but then I stand up to. You know, go talk to a friend and she forces me to sit down and with his demand, avoidance, with his, you know, adhd like his, not he that just doesn't work. He re my kids brains require so much connection and connection every time. And I've had teachers tell me well, I can't connect with them every single time and I'm like, well, unfortunately you're not going to get the behavior that you want. Or as long as you're okay with that, you know, like, if you want this behavior, then relationship is everything and it is for most kids, but especially my kids, who are differently wired.
Kaity Broadbent:That's such a hard ask for a teacher in a large classroom, easier in a micro school. It is Like shameless plug for micro schools, but it's, it's so hard.
Adriane Thompson:It really is. And also, if that's not your goal as a teacher, if you just want to deliver content and you just you know this is just a job like, then you know I get it. It's like it's really hard, but I can see in the teacher that sent him to the principal I could see that you know, he is just playing the game of school um in her class. He's just doing what it because he told me he's like she doesn't have a good relationship with really any of the students in the class, cause I don't think that's what her goal is and that's fine. But then with kids like him, you are going to get bigger behaviors, or it was. You know, yeah, you know, this adult came and told me to do this Um, but then he hit me and he was getting in trouble for getting hit and we're going to talk about this on the podcast today. It's like we do so many things and tell kids that they can't do one thing, but then we're expecting them to do that thing, so it's like really confusing, especially to the teenage brain, and then for me the behavior totally makes sense. Reading through that list, I'm like I can see why he's behaving this way. Now that is okay, and just to let him do what he's going to do and so I can tell what his need was yesterday was to be heard and to be seen and to feel understood. So that's what I did, and then today we'll see how you know today's fun day. They don't. It's not a requirement to go to school today. So we'll see how you know today's fun day. They don't. It's not a requirement to go to school today.
Adriane Thompson:So we'll see how you know where he is in his brain state and then we can kind of talk about strategies, having an understanding of what's going on, versus just oh, he's behaving this way, I need to stop it. That's my responsibility. Instead I'm like, okay, what is my responsibility? What is my role? And you know, as we talked about what's your role in your child's life, like one of our very first episodes we'll have to put in the show notes because I was having to remind myself of okay, what is my role in this? It's not just to stop the behaviors, to help him have self-awareness, curiosity about his own behavior, about the teacher's behaviors, and then what strategies can he have that, you know, makes it so that he can be act in a respectful way, but also everything I'm hearing from him he's not being respected either, so that's, that's just a really hard time.
Kaity Broadbent:It is a very complicated social, emotional and brain development world that we throw kids into and teachers and other kids right Like it's. Everyone has needs and it's really hard for everyone to get those needs met, adults and kids included. But I'm excited to talk to our guest today, dr Dean Burnett. He is a doctor of neuroscience and experienced postgraduate lecturer in psychiatry and mental health, and sometimes a comedian and, most prominently, an internationally acclaimed science author producing many books, such as the Idiot Brain, emotional Ignorance and, my personal favorite, why your Parents Are Driving you Up the Wall and what to Do About it, a book that he wrote for teenagers. Dean is in much demand as a science communicator and pundit, but as several of his books are aimed at teens and young people, he has also spoken at many schools and is involved with numerous projects regarding the mental health and development of young people. He lives in Cardiff, uk, with his wife and their their two children, a chaotic beagle and a sociopathic cat. Let's talk to Dean.
Adriane Thompson:Dean Burnett. We are so excited to have a neuroscientist on the Kindle podcast. Welcome.
Dean Burnett:Thank you for having me. I'm also a neuroscientist. Yes, those things that lines up. Yes, that's good.
Kaity Broadbent:What you just said is consistent with what we are.
Dean Burnett:Yeah, I'm terrible at this. I don't know why you invited me on in the first place.
Adriane Thompson:I love it. Okay, so let's just dive in. And so we would love to start out by hearing about your background, your upbringing, like how did you get into the field of neuroscience and how did you become an author? You have so many books, which is amazing, and what is your big, why in the work that you do today?
Dean Burnett:Well, so I'll tell you my background. How long have we got? Because it's a convoluted tale. Succinctly, I'm not from a traditional academic background, not in the UK at least. I grew up in a sort of remote mining community like the British version of, like the, you know, the Midwestern towns which people just drive straight through. But I couldn't do that in my hometown because there was no through road so you just had to stop and go back down again, which is a, but it's like a former mining valley, you know, when the mine was built around a whole coal mine and then that got shut down so there was not really anything going on there anymore. So it's quite economically stagnant and uh, underfunded area and there's a pub which is obviously very popular in such circumstances and that's where I grew up. But uh, I'm not.
Dean Burnett:You know, most of my friends, family and peers and stuff were more traditionally minded, like a lot of, a lot of outgoing personalities, singing, uh, sports, hard manual labor and stuff when I was the kid who liked to sit there quietly and read and was very shy and timid.
Dean Burnett:I mean, I guess in this day and age I might have been assessed for some sort of neurodivergence, but that just literally wasn't a thing at the time. So I'm just like the quiet kid reading and was into sci-fi and stuff, and then sort of ended up becoming more aware that I was an anomaly. And sort of end up becoming more aware that I was an anomaly and sort of thinking what, why, why am I? You know, I, you know I share the same background as all these other people and I don't have the same interest at all. What's up with me? And remember thinking, you know, eventually reaching the conclusion that there must be something. Maybe something's up in my brain, maybe I got a different sort of brain to everyone else and I thought, well, I should look into that is that what you discovered?
Adriane Thompson:Do you have a different brain than everyone else?
Dean Burnett:I never found an answer, I'll be honest. But I did actually try to find some brain books at the time we're talking the mid-90s in a remote UK community, so not a lot of access to such information pre-internet. But I found a few decent brain books and nothing applied to me per se. They were quite mainstream and generic. But you know, it lit a spark. I said, oh, it's, um, that's interesting. You know, that's no, that's.
Dean Burnett:Then sort of became more attuned to that and then I got sort of interested in science generally. Uh was looking at, the school I went to was a very um, uh, big school, very sort of underfunded, and I uh, so it was the year I did my a levels, the sort of the highest exams at school of science. Uh, if you added up the uh a level physics, chemistry, biology class in a school of over a thousand students, I was, uh, those three those classes add up to seven students, so seven out of a thousand, and three of those seven were me because I was the one doing three sciences, so I was literally half my school science output. So if I got a bad market exam, like we'd-.
Kaity Broadbent:Driving that average down.
Dean Burnett:So yeah, it was like it was a lot of pressure, so yeah, but then they told me about university was a thing which I hadn't heard of before and I thought, okay, that sounds intriguing. Cardiff, the linear city where I still am right now, was the. It did a neuroscience program. So I went there goes, this sounds brilliant, I'm gonna do this. And did, and then I am uh, so did my degree and, rather than just go straight into phd because I didn't know how to go about doing that, I spent two years working. I thought I better get some, you know, get my hands dirty. So I uh spent nearly two years, uh, embalming cadavers for the local medical school, which is, you know, I mean, it sounds bad, uh, and it was, so that's it sounds fascinating yeah, but it wasn't like the most um.
Dean Burnett:You said I'm gonna get my hands dirty while you literally.
Dean Burnett:Yeah yeah, I went way too well, I went overboard with that. But uh, at a stop. When you're embalming the recently deceased all day, every day, you know, you become a bit more of a morbid person. I actually was walking to work one day and I bumped into an old school friend in that direction. He said oh Dean, how are you doing? How's life? And I said life is short, pointless and undignified, just like an awkward pause. Oh, I actually love life. I see previous answers. But uh, yeah, so like that's what I want to get out of, I'll get out of it.
Dean Burnett:I thought, um, so I applied for a. There's a phd, going in psychology school next where I worked and applied for that, got it, spent five years doing a phd and stuff. But, um, in the uk and I think generally it is like, uh, it's a very fraught world in the academic research world. You, you know, publish or perish. You need to. There are very limited resources and lots of people competing for them and you need to be totally focused on your work.
Dean Burnett:And I, because of my weird background, I never was. I never had that mindset and I ended up, you know, dabbling lots of other things too. I like to be creative. Like then I started doing stand-up comedy because I thought that was. I always felt like I wanted to do that, but I was at this point I come out of my shell a bit and I was never brave enough. But then I spent like two years in bomb in the recently deceased and then your your threshold for what you'll put up with changes a bit after you do that. You know like I'll do some comedy. If people don't laugh, they still breathe in step up, you know it's actually a better, better than my day job.
Dean Burnett:So yeah, but uh, so I started writing a lot, of, a lot, of, a lot of material and stuff, but I know I always find writing it more fun than actually delivering it, you know. So that would involve going to places and, you know, standing in front of people five minutes, then come home again and that was uh. But then I found out that blogging was a thing. So I started doing that, just trying to make funny science stuff and a little bit of a cult following. And then I've got picked up by the guardian newspaper for their science blog network quickly became their most the popular science blogger, which is, you know, it's like it sounds like it sounds impressive when you say it loud, but it probably isn't in the grand scheme. It's like saying I was, I was, uh, I was the tallest dwarf on set as well, I, I suppose it's not really in the grand scheme of things.
Adriane Thompson:I was the tallest dwarf on set.
Dean Burnett:It's not one of those, you know. Yeah, in my little world it was fun, but it did lead to a literary agent getting in touch and saying you're just as popular in a book. And I thought, well, yes, I could. I never thought about it. I thought about doing a book like I thought about owning a jetpack. That'd be nice. Not going to happen, it's an idle daydream, but yeah.
Dean Burnett:So I end up sort of pitching this book and because I'm a neuroscientist but I would never part of the whole reverence on the brain, how marvelous and magnificent it is. I was always more about pointing out how it's flawed and messy and what to talk about that the idiot brain. And, um, my assumption was I'd write that and you know, enough blog readers would buy a copy eventually, that I go in my advanced, advanced back and we'd never speak of it again and I thought that was how it was going to go. But, um, yeah, it's currently in 31 countries, 32 and, uh, you know, still going strong and like six books later. I guess that wasn't how it panned out. So so, yes, that's uh, that's why I'm becoming sort of now you're an author.
Kaity Broadbent:Yes, that's very much what I'm saying. You have a jet pack mainstream, that's amazing, not yet. No, okay, so author check jet pack still in the future no, I mean speaking of we just watched the video.
Adriane Thompson:Did you see the first jet pack race in abu dhabi? The guy that won, I think it's from the UK, but yeah, it's so fascinating they have like these engines on their hands and their backs. Sorry to get on a tangent, but it was so fascinating. If you want to look it up, I'll take a look at that and they like had to go around. You know, I thought they were going to crash into each other, but it looked really exhilarating.
Dean Burnett:It looked really exhilarating, it looked cool, but anyway sorry, it's fine, that is a thing now, that is a thing.
Adriane Thompson:now we're going to see Dean zipping around.
Kaity Broadbent:Your next book is everything you've heard the guy who wanted to go see his face.
Dean Burnett:It's me the whole time.
Kaity Broadbent:I want to see your next book be about how, like jetpack travel influences the brain. Like, put those things together for me please.
Dean Burnett:It's just people screaming constantly.
Kaity Broadbent:And rightly so. It sounds terrifying. So what is your big? Why? What are you trying to accomplish with all of your books, Like what is kind of like the central theme of your work, would you say?
Dean Burnett:A couple of themes I try and pursue, but the general core of my output is it sounds a bit obvious, but to improve understanding of the brain, also an appreciation I said it in a sort of jokey way, but I do think the sort of reverence we have all around how incredibly complex the brain is, I don't think that's helpful.
Dean Burnett:I mean, it's not exactly wrong because it is an incredibly complex object that we don't know everything about by any stretch of the imagination, but this idea that it's incredible and beyond our knowledge sort of makes it seem worse when it does something wrong, when it does things wrong all the time.
Dean Burnett:You know, mental health issues are very common disorders and just quirks and traits and phobias and stuff. These are all. These are all things which you know we need to understand how the brain works, are very, very predictable. They are normal, and the idea that we should like, oh, something's going wrong, therefore you know we should be panicked, is, yeah, I think I think, very unhelpful. So, um, I think the more we understand how the brain works, the more we understand how other people work and how they do things which seem illogical from a purely rational perspective but aren't when you understand what's happening in the brain in that context. So, yeah, I do try what I can to get to just boost any sort of general understanding of how we are wired, how we operate, because I think when you know more about that you understand people better and therefore things aren't so scary and confusing.
Adriane Thompson:That's why I started really diving into understanding the brain, because I have neurodivergent kids and teachers and culture were telling me one thing. And then I was just like, yeah, but you're not seeing this child I have in front of me and I was just really trying to understand why he was doing what he was doing. When he was two or three he would. It was like a bull. He would be in the middle of the living room and just run into the wall to try, basically try to knock himself out, and I did not have any friends with kids doing that and I had no idea what was going on. And now, as he got older, I was like, oh, he was seeking proprioceptive input and he was trying to regulate his body and so once I started learning about that, I just couldn't stop. I was just like, okay, now I need to understand, and this really helped me in relationships. It's really helped me just understand why people do what they do exactly what you're talking about yeah, exactly, I think that's really important.
Dean Burnett:Like a lot of autistic family members very close to me in adhd people, so like, um, a lot of friends who are new, divergent in some way shape or form, and it's. It's a lot easier. I mean, it's not, it's not meant to be easy for me, but it's a lot. You can relate a lot more easily when you understand this. Oh, oh, okay, that's what's happening there and that's. You know, it's like this idea that people that there should be a certain way and when they're not, that's some sort of wildly wrong and that's just like. I know that's unhelpful.
Adriane Thompson:It helps us make sense of our own behaviors and reactions. Like you know, recently we had someone with my son who is autistic and she couldn't handle it and I was. This was helping me understand her behaviors. She doesn't have knowledge in this. She didn't understand why he was telling her no and not wanting to listen, and and she even made the comment well, my cousin's more autistic than him and she can listen and all that told me because I know about all of these things was, wow, she just is unaware that not all kids are the same, you know.
Adriane Thompson:And so, instead of getting, I could have been super defensive, could have been mad, angry, like upset, but instead I had this understanding of, like, where she was coming from, so that I could cause. That's not going to help anything if I just get super defensive and angry, and you know, but instead I could bridge that gap and then help her with that relationship with my son and help her understand he is a unique individual and he processes information so different than your cousin, who may also, you know, be autistic, and so we're all unique individuals. So that was, I feel, like this understanding the brain and reading work like and reading books like yours. It really helps me in those times and helps me understand my own thoughts and behaviors.
Dean Burnett:A friend of mine. He's talking to a group of parents of neurodivergent children and he's very much one himself and he's saying, like the phrase which I was introduced to, which I really liked, he's saying it's like they say, when you've met one autistic person. You've met one autistic person and they're like, okay, don't generalize, it's very, very, very, very very.
Adriane Thompson:But if you met one Katie, you've met one Katie, you know like we can say that about anything Like you know.
Dean Burnett:Precisely, yeah, but it's like, well, I met one. Therefore I understand them all. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Kaity Broadbent:Right. But if you look at our world, like, especially the world we built, this like massive system that assumes, like that the unique person does not exist, right, so it is like. So it's like common sense, but like when you look at what we actually do, it's like, oh wow, as a society we really don't understand how to build a world for unique individuals, and I think it shows, like in the mental health of our youth, you know.
Dean Burnett:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there is obviously going to be some restrictions on that and you can't sort of just design a bespoke world for every single individual. That's just, there's. No, that's no practical way to do that. But yeah, it's, um, you know this, it's. It is an ironic artifact of how human brains work.
Dean Burnett:We like conformity, we like unity because, you know, we are very social creatures and so when someone doesn't conform isn't towing the party line, for want of a better description it does strike us as odd and off-putting sometimes, the whole in-group, out-group thing.
Dean Burnett:So I think we expect it more than we should. Now, with more and more understanding of divergence, different mental states, different expressions of identity and so on, this is, are becoming more and more understood. That's not how we should be, you know doing things. But, um, yeah, this, um, that's one of the sort of main criticisms of mainstream education of here, at least in the uk, it's all about getting people to be, you know, productive workers or conform conform to what we expect rather than actually educate to become a fully realized individual in their own right. So that that definitely is you know something which I think there's a lot of cultural inertia behind, that is you know, no, this is how we do things, is that we've always done things and that's, you know, as someone whose entire career is essentially based on not knowing how things are normally done and trying to do it differently, um, I sort of have a, you know, I have a dim view of that sort of you of knee-jerk assumption that we should all just do things the same way.
Adriane Thompson:As you're talking, I'm thinking. The word coming to my mind is control. Does the brain need to have control? Does it not like chaos? I'm just curious.
Dean Burnett:Oh, absolutely. I mean two things the brain doesn't like is uncertainty. It's a well-known thing that uncertainty, you know, we perceive the world around us we don't know what's going to happen or what's going to come next. That's a reliable trigger for stress, I think in evolutionary sense. You know, when you're a creature in the wild, like, okay, I don't know what's going to happen, there you go. I can't, can't plan, I can't predict, I can't. You know, I have to deal with it in the moment. I can't sort of think ahead, something humans are really good at, more than most species, and that stresses us out because obviously we're very sensitive to threats and dangers. So, like, uncertainty means possible danger, can't do nothing about it, and it just gets our backs up, um, on a similar sort of, and it just gets our backs up On a similar sort of wavelength.
Dean Burnett:Similar process is we don't like loss of autonomy, we don't like not being able to control our environment. I mean, to a certain extent we don't insist on godlike powers wherever we go, but it's a case of no one I can leave this place. No one I can get something. No one I who's around. No one I can get something. No one I who's around. No one I can do things and I know no one. I have the. The ability to act on my environment is important for your typical human. When things are taken, autonomy is taken away from us, we react badly to it. This is why, like, obviously people are scared of you know, laws coming in, or judgments or rulings, or just anyone being told, no, you can't do that. And then we have this sort of reactance thing where you're like, well, no, I, even if, like you, didn't care about it until this very moment it didn't even existed. When you're told you can't do it, like no, how dare you like? It's one those things like when certain clubs say no, we always tell toddlers.
Adriane Thompson:no, why do we tell toddlers? But then we wonder why they're fighting back and it's like let's turn those no's into yeses. Yeah.
Dean Burnett:Within reason, of course, like no, you can't drink toilet cleaner. That's perfectly fair.
Kaity Broadbent:I think that there's like a happy medium to all of these things where, like, the human brain is like, okay, this is an acceptable amount of autonomy and now I feel like it's infringed upon or taken away and it's going to cause that reaction. But I want to get into a little bit of your work. So you have a lot of books. One of them is called the Idiot Brain, one is called Emotional Ignorance, and then one of your more recent ones is actually written for teenagers why your parents are driving you up the wall and what to do about it. What made you write a book for teenagers? And it's like is it for teenagers to read or is it for adults to read about teenagers?
Dean Burnett:It's for teenagers to read about adults, about their parents. As is often the case, a lot of the readers seem to be parents who are sort of reading it because, again, I told them technically they've been told they can't read it.
Adriane Thompson:So I'm like, oh, I'm going to read this right now, and that's you know, it's very sort of accidental reverse psychology?
Dean Burnett:That wasn't the plan.
Dean Burnett:But I should have sort of seen that come in. But it technically wasn't my idea. It was my editor at the time, jamie Jamie Coleman. He's a writer himself we share the same agent actually but he was working for a UK children's publisher and he had an idea for a book which was a reverse parenting book, which he meant to.
Dean Burnett:The conflict or the ongoing friction between teens and parents is, you know, part of human life. It's unavoidable in the book itself. I like reference, uh, socrates moaning about it. You know, like the youth of today, they only they pursue pleasure over worthwhile pursuits like this is guy talking like000 years ago. So it's not a new thing and it's obviously not going to go away anytime soon. But almost all the literature you ever see about it, any attempt to explain it or deal with it or manage it, is aimed at the parents.
Dean Burnett:And, in my experience at least, the mainstream portrayal of teenagers is an overwhelmingly negative one, like the way the teenagers are written about. It's like they're a mindless obstacle. It's like they're cows on the freeway, as in they're going to just got to stop and just shoo them away and to let things go back to normal. And that's I mean if you've ever met a teenager. I think that's wildly unfair, because they are fully conscious, functional, mature individuals, not adults. That's the whole point. But no, they are individuals, they have full self-awareness, they're very smart and they're very perceptive. So to keep talking about them as if they're not part of the conversation is again. It's a holdover from my teenage years when I think I mentioned in the book that when the A-level times like the ones I mentioned are on the exams, they keep getting told as school children and our teens, that these exams are vital. If you fail these exams, your life will, it will be over, but you'll never have the prospects you'll ever have again, as if these things are make or break. So that's something our teachers kept telling us the vital importance of these exams. And then obviously I wasn't just me, that was all teenagers of my age.
Dean Burnett:And then we, you know, we all did our exams and the news broke that, uh, we'd sort of done after yet another year of record high scores, and the first thing you see is a politician on the news going well, it just proves exams are too easy now. So, like the pressure on us, yeah, the pressure on us for two years, solid of you must pass or you will. You are doomed and the first thing you see is some crusty old person on the news going well, kids are sick. Actually, it's marvelous. Thanks for that, you know. Just, we've jumped through all your hoops. Then you keep telling us, you know, keep slapping us in the face with it, and that's. That is frustrating.
Dean Burnett:And this is the 90s, so what it's like now I don't know, with the whole tech discussion. So, yes, we came to be the idea of doing a reverse parenting book, but look which which explores the difference in brains of adolescents and full adults. I just thought the idea was brilliant. I thought, yeah, I would love to write that, and I did. And um, here we are having a discussion about it some years later. So, uh, that's awesome, yeah.
Kaity Broadbent:So take us through that adolescent brain, like what are kind of like the. Take us through the development of the brain. What does it need? Like talk through the architecture, what are the changes that are happening in that teenage brain? Just like really slow and detailed?
Dean Burnett:Take us through the whole thing, yeah well, obviously it's not a 20 minute discussion, it's the brain, but so, at the most fundamental level, it's like it helps to perceive the adolescent brain as like the midpoint between the child and the adult brain and that sounds like an obvious thing to say. But it's more actually biologically valid than that. It's not just like a gradual shift from child to adult. There's this whole middle stage which is kind of unique neurologically. So when you're a child you're obviously you're absorbing everything. You learn stuff, you perceive stuff, you take in information, experiences, all this stuff because your brain's pretty much fresh, it's still learning everything. That's why children can be so absorbent. When they pick up random bits of information, they learn things really quickly. It's great. But that's because their brain needs information and every time you learn something new, that is stored in the mechanism of connections between neurons, brain cells. So the child's brain is increasingly full of new connections, so riddled throughout the brain. There's links to everything else as they build up information.
Dean Burnett:And then you know it's it's odd thing to say, but uh, when you hit your teens you start losing these connections because, as you know, as important as they are, not all of them will be useful. So you know, you know, because the brain's such a frugal organ, anything which is there which doesn't need to be there is taking up space in which unnecessarily so, and causing confusion. And so the brain operates by communicating between neurons and the networks with too many connections, and that causes, you know, complexity with unnecessary. It's like, you know, when you have your you could be your laptops got too many programs on at the same time, everything slows down. Is there only so much cpu to go around? So when you hit adolescence, so are you.
Adriane Thompson:Are you describing like synaptic pruning? Yes, I'll take pruning, yeah, okay and does that happen multiple times in like child development, or is it just right before adolescence?
Dean Burnett:um, it's, it's a constant process in that. Uh well, we this is a recent discovery that we believe it's a constant process because that's like a current model suggests that your brain's always getting rid of connections it doesn't need. That's just constantly monitoring unused memories and dusty old architecture and dusty old connections. But when you're a child, obviously you're forming them so rapidly that you know there's it's got barely any time to get. You know you wouldn't. It's a negligible loss, um, but when you're hitting your adolescence, then that's when it goes into overdrive because it's basically taking all the complex and chaotic connections, saying, right, what do I need, what do I not need? You know, going through a clogged laptop and installing all the programs to make it run smoother and faster, and that is, you know it's a long process. That's why your adolescence lasts such a long time and it's, you know, it's sort of uniform.
Dean Burnett:But because the way the brain is structured, because obviously we have your brain stem and then your middle regions, your midbrain, your limbic system, um, then you have your neocortex on top. These are different levels of complexity. So, like you got your basic brain function, your reptile brain, as they say. We're like all, just like body management, they're like reflexes, breathing, heart rates. You know all the stuff which influences that hormone secretion and the stuff we share with reptiles, hence the name. And then, on top of that, which grew out of that like a mushroom in the evolutionary sense, was the, the mammal uh brain, some people call it the um emotions, the complex memories, navigation, more complex but still fundamental traits and abilities. And on top of that I want to add that grew the human stuff. You know, rational thinking, sensory perception, complex complex vision, language, and those are all the big lump on top which is all what we think of when we see the human brain from the outside.
Dean Burnett:But because they're all different evolutionary stages, evolutionary levels, the deeper stuff is more simple. It's not simple in the objective sense but compared to the rest of the brain. So the simple stuff, but she was faster because it's got less complex connections. It's not so uh, you know, elaborate, whereas the more recently evolved complex stuff, like the thinking regions, that takes many, many, many years to fully mature, to get all rid of all the necessary connections, to get it fully online for adult, you know adult functioning, so you have a bit of a mismatch.
Dean Burnett:So at some point in your early teens, that's when you'll have. Your emotion system has been sort of upgraded, but the part of your brain which usually regulates and helps control the emotional system of your frontal cortex, that's got another 10 years to go. So you have this long period of life when your emotions are as powerful as they'll ever be and your ability to deal with them is still being worked on. Then you've got teenagers, who tend to be far more passionate about stuff. They tend to have really strong emotions and be very, be very, very uh involved and committed. And you know they're really sensitive to stuff like that because there's this sort of um uh developmental stage they're at whereby emotions are strong and emotional control is still being moved out what do they need to help develop that regulation and?
Adriane Thompson:yeah you know, or does it just like naturally happen, because I know so many adults that have fully developed brains, that still fly off the handle cannot regulate emotions, so it's like what does that teenage brain need in order to be able to, you know, function in?
Dean Burnett:a way where they can regulate their emotions the best approach uh, given how the brain works, would be to give them a space where they can actually have these emotions. They aren't pressured into bottling them up or suppressing them or being chastised for feeling how they feel. Because the way the brain works, because our emotion system is so complex and elaborate, the part of your brain which process emotions, deal with emotions and sort of help regulate emotions are the same parts which produce them. So in order to work out how emotions should be dealt with, we have to re-experience them, which is why it's counterintuitive when you think about it. But sad music, angry music, we usually think these are negative emotions. We don't like being made sad. We don't like being made sad. We don't like being made angry. We avoid any experience which could lead to that or we'd like to be dreaded happening.
Dean Burnett:But people will still embrace art forms which provoke these emotions. Sad music is really popular. People who do big sad performances win Oscars. People who do comedies do not by and large. People who do comedies do not by and large, and studies have revealed many times that people who are big fans of heavy metal music tend to be the least angry people because they spend a lot of their time listening to music which causes a feeling of anger, but so their brains have a lot more experience of dealing with it and same like when it's a sort of you know, the classic moody teenager like who sits in their room listening to sad music, it probably that's. That's almost like the mental equivalent of going to the gym, in that they've obviously they're going through a very confusing time in their life. They've obviously all the all these urges and, uh, new desires and yearnings which they can't satisfy because they don't even know what they are and the world isn't set up to let them, you know, have free reign with that, and they're frustrated by school, whatever it is, uh. So when they go in the room and sort of sit there with their sound music on, maybe they don't realize they're doing it. What they're doing is there's a brain going, I've got all this sadness and I need to unwrap this. I need to process this and integrate it with my general brain system, my functioning. But in order to do that, I need to turn on the sad, the sad emotion part of the brain and music and like sad stories allow us to do that, but in a totally controlled way, so like it's not your sadness.
Dean Burnett:It's not like you. You're nothing, nothing bad has happened to you per se, but you have the experience of sadness. So, like, go to the gym lifting weights. You're not sort of no, you're not building the pyramids for a cruel pharaoh, you are just voluntarily lifting stuff which is heavy. It's much safer. You can stop doing that whenever you want, but your body is still getting the benefits. And it's sort of why, when you only allow one sort of narrow range of emotions, like the whole positivity movement, you always have to be happy and cheer up and don't be sad. That's really unhelpful. It's like the mental equivalent of going to the gym every day, but only ever exercising your left leg, and after a few months you've got a really big left leg and then the rest of your body's all mispatched. You've fallen over, you look weird and it's not great.
Kaity Broadbent:If we take a look at how we raise young children, I mean there's a lot of crying, I would say, and sadness with like the futility. You know, little kids bump up against futility constantly. Right, they want to go outside, they want to do this Like just the nose, like Adrian was talking about, um. So they have a lot of sadness and typically the typical response is stop feeling sad, don't cry. If you're going to cry, go away. Right? So we're teaching them like to go in your room by yourself and experience your feelings. We're not cool with it, right? And so then we're surprised when teenagers go and stay in their room and experience their feelings, cause we've, like, actually taught them that like that is actually the only appropriate thing to do with your, with your negative feelings.
Kaity Broadbent:Would you say that we should also not do that to young children?
Dean Burnett:I think that should. Again, it's one of those case-by-case basis things. So there will be contexts and times when that probably is the best response. Because, as well as you know, especially when you're very young, experiencing your emotions is good good for you to help you develop properly in order to regulate them, but also you need to learn how the world works. You need to have a framework of you know okay, this behavior is acceptable, this behavior is not. And having total free reign in your emotions is also not, you know, not the best approach. It's one of those Abe Simpson, a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B things. So, like you still need to learn regulation and stuff. And having total free reign to be emotional whenever you want to in any context and stuff, and I'm in total free reign to be emotional whenever you want to in any context.
Kaity Broadbent:So I guess a balance point might be like they need futility. So the answer isn't just let them do whatever they want or like just give them infinite autonomy so they never meet futility. That would not serve the brain. And then, when they do, they meet that futility and they're they're experiencing that sadness. Maybe just a little bit more empathy in that moment to not also be like you're ungrateful or you're like disrespectful because of your feelings. It's like, oh, it's so normal and natural that you would feel disappointed and sad yeah, I get that. And maybe just a little bit more like empathy in that moment and understanding that that feeling, that emotion, is going to drive the brain development. That's what's. That's what's helped me overcome my I have I have four little kids, so I'm like kind of in little kid land.
Kaity Broadbent:My oldest is about to turn 12. So we're like about to start all this and I'm watching it happen. I'm like, okay, like I, I've got to get ready for this. This is going to look different. But then I'm kind of looking at my four-year-old and I'm like maybe it's not that different than the toddler.
Adriane Thompson:I wanted to ask too, like how important is co-regulation or an emotionally mature parent or adult to be able to help navigate those emotions? Because you're saying, yeah, it's okay to let them listen to the sad music because they're processing, but how important it is for them to have, you know, an emotionally mature adult.
Dean Burnett:That is actually a really important thing. I mean even like the most recent, you know, thinking on the subject is that you know adult parents of teens like are having more of an influence than they think Like in terms of you know normal parents will say you know, in the modern day you're using, you have too much screen time time, using your phone too much. But studies have shown that the teens with the best sort of phone hygiene, the best phone discipline, are the ones with parents who practice it too, because many parents will say put your phone away, it's bad for you and they'll just stay at theirs the next two hours. I'm working, Of course. I mean I've said it myself, I'm not going to sort of point any fingers at anyone I was going to say are you totally guilty?
Dean Burnett:No, no, no, no, it's definitely a thing, but obviously, again, the whole idea of a screen dime is sort of far too vague a concept because obviously screens show you literally everything. So you are doing useful stuff, but, etc, etc. It looks, you know, um, it looks uh like a different thing from the outside. Um, so, yeah, like the parents have a more, um, uh, concrete role to play than they perhaps realize. I know teens will be rebellious and be sort of resistant, but so it seems like I don't listen to you at all, I don't care anything about what you're doing, what you say, but that's not really quite how it works.
Dean Burnett:I think the um, the healthiest parenting relationships are the ones where both sides treat it as like a sort of a negotiation. So like I think one thing I did explore that doing the adult brain is actually uh, ill-suited for the parenting relationship as well, because there's so much that's happened in the adult brain that we which makes us makes us obviously I'm in the 40s as well less able to empathize with them properly. Because, although we went through the teen stage ourselves, so now we're at a point where we've learned a lot more emotional regulation, our emotion system isn't as high powered as it was when we were younger and in our teens. So, although we can sort of recognize that, when your daughter is saying, I've got this intense crush on this guy I've never met, or my friend said something slightly off color, now I'm heartbroken. You know, you've been so dramatic, you've been so over the top from our perspective, yeah, but from their perspective they're not. You know, these are all brand new things to them and yeah, it's, it's really important.
Dean Burnett:And like one of the one of the worst things I think you can say to a teenager is what have you got to be depressed about? Because, in the grand scheme of things, yeah, I've got a mortgage and I've got a job and I could get fired. You've just got school and stuff. Yeah, true, but if that's your logic, there's one person on earth who is the most stressed out of everyone and only they are allowed to complain until they pass away or something, and then someone else gets to. So pass away or something and then someone else gets to. So there's no stress road there. We don't have like a sort of who's going to be stressed today.
Kaity Broadbent:Yeah mine, I got it.
Dean Burnett:It's not a competition two minutes, yeah, I've got my two minutes in and then it passed on to the next guy. So that's not how it works. It's you know, it's all subjective. So telling you know teenagers, yeah, well, you don't know, the is just like both wrong and it totally invalidates their feelings. You know. It's sort of saying only are you stressed and depressed, I don't care, I think your, your depression is irrelevant to me. That's just like a it. I can see where it comes from. I can sort of see the frustration if they are sort of talking about things which are which mean nothing to you in the grand scheme, but still it's a very, very damaging thing to say to a young person.
Adriane Thompson:Yeah, what I hear from. I do have a 14 year old, so I'm in it, you know, and my middle child just turned 12. So we're almost in it with him. But what I hear from parents with teenagers often is, you know, that they dismiss their feelings, or they just have like this attitude about them, like well, they just you know that they dismiss their feelings, or they just have like this attitude about them, like well, they just, you know, do their own thing, or like they're supposed to be like this.
Adriane Thompson:But then I feel like what it is is they expect them to have an adult brain, to be in the same development stage that they are, which they're not. So can we like talk about that a little bit, like how do you see that this impacts the parent or the adult teen relationship and how does it impact the teen's brain development, depending on how they're treated? And a quick story you know, I have been reading a lot and trying to make sure that I am validating my son's feelings and realizing this is real to him, even though it doesn't seem real to me, and so he was really upset, extremely dysregulated frontal lobe, completely offline, and he was just like get out of my room, just leave me.
Adriane Thompson:And I so badly just wanted to just run away, because my go-to is flight, and so that's my stress response and but I was like, no, he actually does. Even though he's telling me he doesn't need me, I know he actually does need me, and so I had to be emotionally matured enough and I I don't know where it got this phrase from but I was just like I love you too much to leave you like this. And I just kept saying that. And eventually he just sat on the bed and he was like wanted me to sit next to him literally moments before, screaming at me and telling me that he hated me, get away from me. And so I sat on the bed next to him and it took a lot out of me right To be hearing those things and to just like stay regulated myself.
Adriane Thompson:And I was just like, and I think saying I love you too much to leave you like this was helping my brain stay calm as well, and so I sat down with them and then it turned from anger into tears and he was just, you know, so sad and I was able to get to the root. So I'm wondering, like so many parents of teens hear their teens say certain things and they're just like oh cause they treat them as if they're an adult brain and as if they don't have needs. So I'm just curious, like what in your work, how you see this affecting the relationship and then also the development?
Dean Burnett:yeah, totally. There's so much about that which is really, you know, important to be aware of. I mean the thing you've just said, like your teen will scream at you and yell at you but, counterintuitively, that's usually indicated that they consider you a safe person like they. They know you're not going to abandon them, they know you're not going to, you know, retaliate in any particularly. You might get mad at them, but you know you're safe for them. They, they depend on you, they rely on you, they know they can. Therefore, they are willing to express their emotions to you.
Dean Burnett:Like, whereas someone who is, you know, there's something they're afraid of, someone they do, you know, don't feel safe around. They would just be. They just clam up and sort of be completely distant with them and that's it's sort of a weirdly exasperating manifestation of this different sort of brain interaction. Yes, you're yelling at me because you care, and you know I care, and that's sort of completely opposite of what you're saying, but you know. So, yeah, that's something to be, but I think it's also.
Dean Burnett:I mean, I don't think you've discussed this and other things, but, um, the most obvious manifestation of treating teenagers like they have an adult brain is the whole sleep issue, like the fact that so many parents kick their teen out of bed. It's sort of like he's still in bed at 9 am. Come on, their brain is actually literally requires more sleep at different times because of all the hormonal upset they're going through internally. Requires more sleep at different times because of all the hormonal upset they're going through internally, because sleep is a very sensitive process regulated by hormone levels and chemical stimuli, and so on and so on.
Adriane Thompson:We saw a huge shift from age 12 to 14 of at nighttime. He always was in bed by 9 or 10 and now it's like come on, dude, like you know, and because his school starts at 8, you know, it's not like he can't sleep until noon On the weekends, we allow him to. But yeah, we saw a huge. He was a kid that, like, could never stay up past 9, 30, 10. And now it's a complete opposite. So I can see that those changes are definitely happening for sure.
Dean Burnett:Yeah, that's what happens. Like their sleep cycle gets knocked back a few hours because of all the stuff's happening internally and because their brain's doing all this extra work as well as the day-to-day requirements. I know which sleep helps you prepare and replenish and sort out everything you've learned during the day. Uh, all this overhaul to all this maturing, they need more sleep. So they need more sleep at different times, and most adults don't recognize that. They sort of think well, you, you, you have an adult sleeping schedule, surely, so I'll wake you up, but if you're still about at nine, that's, you're wasting the best part of the day. They're not. They are actually recovering from sleeping, and adults tend to see sleep in their teens as like um, like food, as in they're just being greedy, they're being gluttonous, they don't need this much, you have to cut them off. Whereas it's actually more like um, seeing a marathon runner at the end of a race just wheezing like they need more oxygen to replenish it. And you wouldn't go up to a marathon runner and say stop hogging all the air, greedy. That is greedy, because that would be dumb, you wouldn't do that. But that's. That is essentially what you're doing to the teenager saying you're still in bed, you're lazy and like, um, yeah, and that's, it's not it's.
Dean Burnett:They are undergoing a fundamental biological change which requires a lot of extra sleep at different times and it's a I say it's unfortunate the world we've built around them doesn't allow them to get that during the week because you've got to be out, as I was saying, for school, um, and a lot of you know a lot of the classic cliches that we apply to teenagers, like the bad attitude, mumbling, discoordinated, sloppy, low mood. These are all classic signs of sleep deprivation. So there's a huge overlap between teenage stereotypes and lack of sleep and it's one of those things which people don't sort of grasp and stuff. So obviously their brains are different to an adult brain because they need sleep at different times, like that. And there's also the um, because we, you know, we don't really recognize the adolescent brain as this whole distinct, unique stage of brain development.
Dean Burnett:So, parents, I think a lot will quickly go from you're my child, you're okay, you're an adult now. And this gray area between isn't really perceived appropriately, because one thing a lot of parents say to their teens is you treat this place like a hotel, you expect me to pick up after, you expect me to do your clothes and stuff, which is a valid complaint when you're a parent who's obviously already overworked and everything. But from your teen years perspective, that's been their life until this point. You have picked up after them, you have provided for them, you have done everything that you need to do because they were your child. Now they're bigger, now you know.
Dean Burnett:But at no point did there was no sort of contract negotiation. There was no sort of uh like okay, let's have a quarterly review, you're 13 now, so you're a new duty to the year ahead. Like there was no sort of we don't do that. So they just get older and they seem more mature to us than they are. But so we just say, okay, new rules for you. Like what Since when? What's going on? And you can sort of see why they would resent that stuff.
Kaity Broadbent:Can I just admit, though, that I used to. Actually, I used to when my kids were very little. I had a very different perspective on parenting, and I did actually have lists that I posted in the kitchen of two-year-olds do these things, three-year-olds do these things and moms do these things. Like every time someone had a birthday I would like put up a new list, or I'd be like, oh, let's get the six-year-old list out, like so I was treating it like this, which was it created some interesting conversations and like helped scaffold them. There are some good parts, but I'm like I don't have any lists up anymore. I just am a little bit more intuitive than that, but I tried.
Adriane Thompson:Yeah, these stereotypes that you talk about. Obviously they're probably not very helpful to have in all these labels that we're applying, like lazy and messy and so what can adults shift their you know, instead of labeling them with these things like how can we view teenage behavior? Instead, that helps the relationship and the development instead of hinders it that helps the relationship and the development instead of hinders it.
Dean Burnett:I think, in terms of immediate practical things you can do, I think it would be on weekends, like let them sleep. That's the most immediate thing in most situations. I know you have plans, I know you want to do family stuff and that's totally valid to want that. But at some point you might have to sort of suck it up and say, look, yeah, it'd be lovely if you spent time as a family, but you're exhausted, you clearly are running on fumes. You need to replenish and by doing that that will, you know, give them more reserves. So then you know, you might see them less, but the time you have together would be a lot less fraught because they've rested, they can sleep and yeah, it's it.
Dean Burnett:I know it's a lot of time. It's no parents needling their kids, because that's part of the dynamic. But when they have slept in and if they come downstairs like a midday, oh look, who decided to show up, like you know, just a really, really hammer home the whole you're sleeping too much perspective isn't going to be helpful because you know they they don't, they didn't choose this, they didn't want to stay in bed until you know midday, but it's going to happen because that's what their body's going through. So, like, a change in sort of your approach to their behavior is probably a good one yeah, what about attitude?
Adriane Thompson:because I feel like attitude's a big one with teenagers. What could we shift our mindset about attitude?
Dean Burnett:yeah, I think it's also um worth remembering. That's another thing which adults struggle with because of how the brain works that we remember our teen years but we don't remember them accurately, more often than not because of something called the fade-in effect bias. Now that's the process whereby our memory system works by just restoring the information we experience. But because it's such an old system, it's usually based more on emotion than like objective importance, and that's why you can study for months for an exam and just get it all in there repeating over and over again, and then when the exam is finished, you just forget it. You know, I don't remember any of that anymore, but I've been the most experienced. Like you know, you're a teenager and you're in the school hall and your pants fall down. Oh well, that's a different life.
Adriane Thompson:Now that's going to pop up every two minutes for the next like month I went my pants in front of a whole group of yeah, yeah and I, yeah, that's, yeah, and you haven't forgotten that, have you?
Dean Burnett:you'll be walking on the street. There was just somebody.
Dean Burnett:Just go, hey remember me ah and you'll start cringing and you just co-occur into a ball on the street and start crying. They do. It's one of those. That's just a weird way our memory system works, but because of the you know, it brings setups around, defend itself and to emphasize our you know make us feel better about ourselves.
Dean Burnett:Negative emotions, uh, negative memories, negative emotional memories they tend to be more salient at first, like they, you know, remember those more strongly than positive ones, but they fade faster. So if you think of it like chewing gum, like you know, some chewing gum like tastes nice, some tastes like sour. The sour ones are more vivid but the flavor fades away. So after like 20 minutes you just chew in a lump. It's there. I can remember that happening, but don't taste anything anymore, whereas the positive, nice flavor lasts like for several hours. In terms of how the brain works, you've still got the chewing gum, but it's still producing nice things.
Dean Burnett:Positive memories will do that. They will keep triggering positive feelings long after the effect, whereas negative memories will fade tying heels or wounds. What this means is the older you get, the further back your memories go. They more and more more positive in nature. So a lot of adults will remember.
Dean Burnett:Oh, it's great being a teenager because all the good stuff that happened there was a lot of bad stuff in there, but your brain sort of smoothed that over, raised that away, so you can seem like from the adult perspective, like what are you moaning about? Like I'm a teenager, it's the best time of your life is, yeah, you think that now because your brain's sort of taking all the edges of those memories. But this they're going through in real time. This has happened to them. Now they don't have the same, uh, distance from it that you do so like it's not like they're being ungrateful or like so wasting their teenage years. They live in it. This is about being a teenager's. Like you know, they will have attitudes, they will have strong emotional reactions and stuff. But to recognize that A this is normal, natural and B you probably did that yourself. You just don't remember it, that's. You know it doesn't make it any easier to deal with, but it probably does make it easier to sort of understand the process and that can be quite helpful.
Kaity Broadbent:I've always wondered why, like being pregnant is terrible on most days. But then I'm like looking at back and I'm like, oh, I miss having, like I miss being pregnant, I miss having babies. I'm like it is wildly terrible and I know that, but I can't feel that anymore. Or like when you go on a really big hike and it's very hard, and you're like I want to die right now, this very hard, and you're like I want to die right now. This is so terrible. And then, like three weeks later, you're like let's go hiking. You know, like that was so fun. Like my brain has definitely like taken the edges off. I love that phrase of of the negativity. Yeah, that's that. That helps me have a tremendous amount of empathy for what they're going through actually.
Dean Burnett:So thank you yeah, but it again, I don't know if it's an american thing, but it it does happen in Britain. A lot Like particularly older generations. They will, because obviously it's so far back for them. They will contradict themselves within minutes Because I, when I was growing up, I used to get buses to school. Because it's such a private area the buses were, they were rejects from the local city, so like they're not safe for human transportation, so let's give them to these school kids. So they caught fire a lot and the windows fell out, all that sort of stuff, and I was telling my grandparents and, uh, like they say, oh, you're lucky. When I was your age I had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow with no shoes. All right, fine. And then two minutes ago, ah, school days, best days of your life, really that's. You made them sound horrific. So like it's a lot of mixed messages you get from adults when you're a teenager as well okay, so let's talk about risk for a minute.
Kaity Broadbent:You know, we perceive teenagers as like making wildly ridiculous, stupid decisions and like that. What? What's going on in their brain, why? Why do things seem so obviously risky to us and not risky at all to them?
Adriane Thompson:And how do we address that risk? Like, and I am asking for an actual friend, not me, but she, her, her son is, uh, her stepson 17 and they, you know, have an app that they were able to see that he was going over a hundred miles an hour. Um, and he doesn't even have his permit and he was the one driving. So she's like what do I do? So it's like I want to talk about risk, but then also, what do we do whenever they make or take these risks that seem so dangerous to us but they're like, oh, whatever.
Dean Burnett:For a second there. It took me a few minutes to realize you went in a car, good Lord, In a car. Who is this kid? Let's just please get it. Wow, that's a good, that's a good athletics program, but no, it's.
Dean Burnett:It's a known thing. It's like one thing about teenagers, like they are less able to perceive risk, and there are loads of different factors which contribute to that. One is just simple lack of experience, you know, when we understand what's dangerous, what's not dangerous, because we have life experiences which teach us that, whether it's like seeing other people go through this sort of stuff or learning about bad things happen to certain people who, will you know, have very bad consequences as a result of this. So adults have the, you know, just the general life experience which teaches you do that, don't do that, you know. Do that if you want, but it's going to be a bit of a big. And it's also weird for adults, because when you're older you have a sort of you go the other way, you have a risk aversion. So people will, you know, usually stick with safe options and not take small risk, which is obviously good outcomes, like you know. Changing for a better job, uh, which is guaranteed you can't need to have more money. But yeah, but I know, I know this place. Okay, what if something happened? We are far more willing to stay within our comfort zone, as it were, which teenagers aren't. But that would also be an instinctive thing like the teenage brain, because it's developed all these new connections. Everything's been overhauled and upgraded. Uh, one of those things will be like our pleasure centers and our emotional centers.
Dean Burnett:So then the teenage brain needs new stuff to be stimulated by, to experience, to, for rewarding things, and that's important because and when you're a child you've gone through it yourself, you've got the kids right age, but they'll have a favorite childhood toy or something or a favourite childhood cartoon. Then suddenly they're just not interested in that, that old thing, and it's sort of weird, it's like for them. Yes, they can remember being fond of that, remember, they have good memories with it. They don't care about it anymore. It's like trying to watch a classic film on modern day high def screen. It's still a good film. It's all blurry now and it's all black and white, and I'm not used to that. It's distracting by being so old and grainy, and that's sort of where these childhood pleasures come from, how they're perceived in their head. So the brain's going I need new stuff. I need new things and, because of the way the world works and because of how life is like a lot this will be risky. You know, I can't know. I don't care about teddy bears anymore, but uh, what about? Uh, certain chemicals, like I've heard. Those are fun and new and sort of going really fast and like things that trigger adrenaline and stimulation and sensation and excitation.
Dean Burnett:Their brains need in this and as well as that, because they are becoming adults, therefore individuals, you know, self-assured, independent individuals. That's the whole point, that they want as much autonomy as possible. But the world doesn't let them have it. You know, being a teenager, there's weird quasi space between you're expected to do all these things. You don't have the rights of adults who can do these things. It's a little mismatch.
Dean Burnett:In the UK the age of consent is 16. But if there's a film with any sort of sex in it, you have to be 18 to see it. So that doesn't seem like the right way around, does it? You can have sex in this country, but you have to have a blindfold for two years. You can't look directly at country, but you have to have a blindfold for two years. I mean, you can't look directly at it, but you can do it.
Dean Burnett:It seems weird when you put it like that and so, like you know, teenagers pick up on this stuff. They notice like there's a lot of inconsistencies. Like you know, you're old enough to choose your school courses and your lessons which will define your entire life oh okay, can I have a beer? No, lessons which will define your entire life is oh okay, can I have a beer? No, you're not old enough. Okay, that that isn't logically consistent, but it is the world we've got to present them with. So so then you know anything which you know, because, I said earlier on, we don't like it when our autonomy is reduced, when we lose control of our environment. So anything which gives it back to us, we like that.
Dean Burnett:So that would be with teenagers like you are all right, well, I'm gonna do that, and my mom says I can't. Well, I'm going to do it because, therefore, she tells me it's dangerous, but I don't know, I don't care, I'm excited. And so all these things combine to sort of suppress the perception of risk in the teenage brain, in the adolescent brain, and you know, whereas the adult brain is opposite and there's hyper a way of risk a lot, and particularly when it comes to our own children, because obviously that's not something teens can relate to, the sort of the fact that, no, I know I'm your parent, but how I perceive you is very different because you're, I'm in charge of you like I'm, you're my're my responsibility and you're my most important person. And they don't have that yet. They haven't got that stage of life where that's something they can easily relate to. So it becomes an ongoing discussion, shall we say, or like a source of friction, but it is one which is obviously very, very important to be aware of.
Kaity Broadbent:Yeah, I'm reminded of all the times I've said I know that it doesn't seem risky for you to be that high up on that wall or something like that, but I'm the person that has to drive you to the hospital. So I like get a vote about this, like, like, my opinion matters a little bit here, so let's like have a conversation, you know, but, um, it is important also for the brain to take risk Right and to see like, oh, um, it is important also for the brain to take risk right and to see like, oh, I did that and I did feel scared and I did it, so can you talk about, like, the benefits of that?
Dean Burnett:yeah, totally. I mean, that's one of the things which, um, I'm sorry, I'm trying to emphasize what I can I think I've said so far it makes it seem like, uh, the behavior of teens and their sort of, the way they perceive the world and the emotions things, is like an accidental byproduct of how the brain develops. But more evidence yes, it's actually deliberate, it's something we've evolved to do on purpose, because the same thing happens, or at least an analog of, in other social species like rats, chimps, primates. They all have adolescents who are far more risk-taking, far less conforming to the authority figures and so on and so on. So there is a lot more you know, consistency in nature, with adolescents doing this, and you can look at it from the grand scheme.
Dean Burnett:You can sort of see why that would evolve, because you think of like humans, as tribes in a very, you know, dangerous environment. You find a place which is safe. You know there's all our resources, here's all our, we know where everything is. You just stay there and that causes stagnation, you know, like a genetic stagnation, environmental stagnation. Something goes wrong, it's it's not a, it's not a safe long-term strategy. So if we had certain members of the tribe who, when they're in like almost in their physical prime, the sudden urge to go nah to hell with this and just like run off and do stuff that keeps things refreshed, you know. So they go and find other people, they explore new things and stuff, so like that, that adolescent urge. Obviously we're talking so far back that you know the human lifetime would have been like 40.
Dean Burnett:So it's uh, you know that's not exactly little kids and everything, but um, uh, so it's an evolved thing because it's something which, uh, humans need to do to keep the species going. Probably that was a long time ago and since then we've created this whole new environment, the safe world around us, which does which sort of thwarts that more often than not it's like you want to go fast, you can't, you want to. So you want to drink stuff? You can't, you want to, you want to do some graffiti? Nope, and so like what you can do is sit in your room and be quiet. No, thank you. Sounds, sounds great, and um, so, yeah, so like you can sort of see that sort of that that comes from that sort of uh, lack of, um, uh, risk awareness and that sort of need to do things which we associate with teenagers, but it's not like, uh, there's something wrong with them, it's just like that's, that's humans, that's how we do if you think about like adolescence, you know going.
Kaity Broadbent:I don't know how you technically define that word, but I've heard it said that, like you know, since the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed until 25, there is like your early 20s is also kind of this late adolescence. And if you look at how many like startups that have completely changed the world and all of the technology that we have, it's often people in their early 20s who are willing to go out and risk and do things differently and not live in a state of defensive protection and consistency. That really moves humanity forward. And so I just think it's a kind of an interesting paradox that we're like stop doing all these risky things, but also please reinvent the whole world for our benefit.
Dean Burnett:Please keep doing them. Yes, no, totally. It's always like the younger people who are the ones who create and bring about changes, because they want to change stuff. It's important to them, but also, again, the emotional stuff. They have the passion, the drive to do things which wouldn't necessarily be wise. Looking to an adult, like, oh, that's a lot of hassle, that, but they care so much about stuff that they will go the extra mile to make sure it's done. And also, we're seeing that dynamic change and shift all the time because of, you know, people live longer now because we have medicine and awareness of health care and exercise and just well-being. So people live much, much longer now. So we have medicine and awareness of healthcare and exercise and just wellbeing. So people live much, much longer now. So those teenage years are far more. You know, that means 20 onwards. There's a much larger chunk of the population now, like the adults. There's a much bigger range of those, whereas teenagers are always going to be in this particular window of age.
Adriane Thompson:Yeah, age yeah, I know you said that, uh, they have less brain connections and like the teenage brain, but I was reading a brainstorm by dr daniel siegel that the adolescent brain is when you can learn the most things. So I'm like I feel like that is kind of what katie's talking about too. It's OK, we're not as risk averse and then also we can learn things at a rapid rate. So that makes sense of why these young 20-year-olds are changing the world with these really amazing ideas and companies and things like that.
Dean Burnett:Yeah, also, it's worth mentioning that. You know, in the 20s, the 25 thing is almost like a misunderstanding. It's true, in that the brain is still developing up to 20, but this whole idea that 25 is a cutoff point, that's actually based on studies and research where they just, you know, 25 was the oldest people involved. So we still think it keeps going after that. But, yes, under 25 would be when the most of it's happening. But you know, then people start using that as a sort of um, like uh, restrictions and yeah, but you're under 25, you don't you?
Kaity Broadbent:can't rent a car yeah and that's like.
Dean Burnett:But when you think of like a lot of professional athletes, they're that's almost retirement age for them. Like in military, sign-up age is like 17, 18. You have to be consistent with this.
Kaity Broadbent:You can't just say well, you're under 25.
Dean Burnett:You can't decide anything important for me, but for yourself, yeah, you can sacrifice your life if you want to. Come on, guys, let's have some sort of regularity to all this Good point.
Adriane Thompson:I want to keep asking you questions, but we are almost out of time, so this is a question that we ask all of our guests. I mean this has been like the best I have, like we'll have to have. Maybe have you on again and talk about emotions. I would love to talk about that, um, but here's a question we ask all of our guests who is someone who has kindled your love, curiosity, motivation, passion?
Dean Burnett:Oh, interesting question, Because I'm not. I'm one of those people I'm not sort of totally sold on. I'm a bit wary of the whole thing about role models. I like inspirations and people are like, oh that's good, I'll try that. But the idea that I want to model myself for one particular individual it's not neuroscientifically. I find that a bit of a daunting concept because obviously individuals are humans and when you put them on pedestals as soon as their flaws manifest, then like oh no, I was wrong, and then it becomes a sort of confusing thing.
Dean Burnett:Um, yeah, there's lots of sort of individual people like on a sort of because it's such a weird eclectic cv and stuff.
Dean Burnett:But I think, um, well, someone I've sort of definitely do sort of look up to and was was a big uh influence in my life in general. It was the, the British comedy icon Spike Milligan um passed away many years ago now, but he was like World War II soldier and everything and he um, you know, influenced monty python and like he was like that sort of archaic stuff. But he um did all this because of his experiences in world war ii and he was hit by a mortar and so ended up having some serious psychological breakdowns and so like this whole idea of humor and, uh, you know, mental health awareness and stuff. That's a lot of that did infuse from my experience with him and uh yeah, so I'm a big fan of Spike Milligan's. His War Diaries are some of the best reads ever. I mean, they're a bit sort of well, they're written by a soldier in active wartime. They're not the most child-friendly reads but they are very, very informative in that respect.
Kaity Broadbent:I love that. Yeah, milligan, I always like to refer to. Love that, all right.
Dean Burnett:How can listeners learn more your work? Where can we find you? Um, well, it's all my many books out there. Um, depends which country you're in, of course, listen to this, but uh, idiot, brain is the us version of my most successful book to date. Um, uh, whoopi goldberg, what the tv writes to it, but uh, that's never. Never came out to it. Yes, me and whoopi are friends now, weirdly. Um, yeah, good you could introduce us.
Dean Burnett:Maybe we can have her on. She might be up for it. I don, yeah, it was a very strange phone call to receive from an agent Like are you busy? No, okay, yeah, but it's all on my website, deanburnettcom. Essentially Believe me. Weirdly that name wasn't taken.
Kaity Broadbent:Great. And are you on social media at all? Who would have thought or do?
Dean Burnett:you have any like, yeah, yeah, social media at all. Or do you have any like, yeah, yeah, I'm on, uh, I'm on twitter slash x, you're gonna do way up to that. Um, facebook, dean bonnet. Author. Um, uh, yeah, just again all the links on my site if you wanted to come and find me in any way, shape or form. I'm trying to use instagram and tiktok now, but they scare me too, me too they were children hung out and I'm 41 and that's not really a good look is it.
Adriane Thompson:I love it. Katie and I create all of our content um for our instagram account and we're we're. She just said this morning she's like I think this is getting easier and I'm thinking I don't think it is, but it is it's a whole different world, for sure. Uh, thank you, dean, so much for coming. We learned so much about the brain and we just appreciate just. You know your passion, your heart, and you know your comic relief is amazing too. I love it.
Dean Burnett:Thanks very much. Thanks for having me. I'll come back anytime if you want any more.
Kaity Broadbent:Wonderful Thanks so much. We'll talk soon.
Adriane Thompson:That's it for today. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Kindle podcast as much as us, and it really helps us get big guests. If you go on and rate and review us on Apple podcasts on Spotify, you can give us a rating and if you have any questions, all you need to do is email us at podcast at prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group. All you need to do is search the Kindled Collective and you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the Sunday.
Kaity Broadbent:Spark. The Kindled podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the ideas that we talk about here on the Kindled podcast. If you want more information about guiding a Prenda micro school, just go to prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling.
