Sarah Jayne Blakemore in Inventing Ourselves. But many adolescents do amazing things – they are entrepeneurs, coders, musicians, athletes, artists and scientists.” “It’s easy to mock teenagers and colllectively lament how badly behaved and useless they are. Again, little is certain, but Professor Blakemore explains the latest thinking into conditions such as schizophrenia and how they relate to the developing teenage brain. Towards the end of the book, there are a couple of chapters and about the increasingly important subject of teenage mental health. As Professor Blakemore is at pains to reiterate throughout the book, certainty is impossible when talking about brain development.
If you’re trying to understand why your child’s empathy levels have dropped through the floor, or perhaps their grades at school have worsened slightly in the last 12 months, the answer may be is inside this book. To clarify, some screen use actually appears to be better for our children than none at all. Lack of sleep, due to screen use, possibly, but the actual screens themselves, as far as the research included in this book goes, are neither good nor bad. It reveals compelling evidence, that for now at least, screen use is not bad for us. The book is not entirely without succor for those who are worried about it. Increased technology use by children is a huge subject, and one of the most well-trodden battlegrounds in our house. Professor Blakemore calls for an urgent change to this situation. Largely because there just isn’t the information available anywhere.
One area where a lot of parents will feel they need more information is screen time. The book also looks at brain-plasticity ( something mentioned in a couple of other Word Wednesday books about being awesome.) and explains why showing teenagers the horrific physical effects of smoking might not be the best way of persuading them to stop. The short answer to this latter question is “peer pressure,” but the longer answer is significantly more interesting, and applies to adults well beyond their teenage years, too. The book explains how teenagers develop a sense of self and why they might take increased risks. Particularly when he’s sitting in the dark, playing on his Xbox when it’s a gloriously sunny day outside. No true parenting suggestions are offered, but the knowledge that certain behaviors are as a result of brain chemistry and part of growing-up rather than sheer bloody-mindedness has helped modify the way in which I interact with my son. Inventing Ourselves tries to explain what these changes are and how they affect our children, allowing us to (maybe) alter the way in which we interact with them. Prior to the year 2000, it was considered that the brain didn’t change very much after childhood, but modern research has shown that human brain continues to develop throughout the teenage years and even into one’s 20s. There are however some general trends, and evidence to support that the teenage brain undergoes wholesale changes during adolescence. Surely there’s a reason for this? Her resulting work suggests that there is.Īs one might expect, it turns out, there’s no such thing as a typical teenager. Teenagers are saddled with various stigma tendency to sleep, slow to communicate, and liable to take risks.
Perturbed by stereotypes of teenagers and their tendency to be the butt of derogatory jokes, Professor Blakemore decided to shed light on a previously little-studied area. In her book, she explains how she came to study the subject, how studies are carried out, and what, if any conclusions can be drawn from her research, and additional research from around the globe. Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore has revolutionized the understanding of teenage brains, after many years of painstaking research into the neuroscience and brain development of adolescents.
Subtitled, “ The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain,” Inventing Ourselves is possibly the book every parent of teenagers is crying out for. And I didn’t fall asleep once whilst doing so. Yet when I saw a Christmas book round-up at the end of last year that included Inventing Ourselves by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore I knew I had to read it. Anything remotely technical usually sends me to sleep. Particularly since becoming a parent (which is now for more than a quarter of my life!). I have to be honest, I’m not a massive reader of non-fiction ( Word Wednesday books excepted).
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