by Dennis Coates | Adolescent Brain, Education, Health & Nutrition, Parenting, Peer Pressure, Teen Culture
I recently spoke with a mother of three boys, ages 11, 13 and 15. She told me she and her husband plan to give all three sons video game consoles for Christmas. Of course, they’ll win a lot of “best mom and dad” points with these gifts. She and the father...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking, Education, Parenting, Parenting Books, Rebellion, Teen Culture, Teen Success, Work
Since the 1990’s, when Dr. Jay Giedd and his colleagues at the National Institute for Mental Health published their pioneering research about adolescent brain development, more than a dozen authors with different backgrounds have written about “the teen brain.” For...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking, Education, Mentoring, Teen Success, Work
It was the summer of 1960, and I was 15. Elvis’ active duty service in the Army was behind him, and John Kennedy was running for President. My father, a chief warrant officer in the Army, had been reassigned to Germany and our family would follow six months later when...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Alcohol, Critical Thinking, Drugs, Education, Encouragement, Parenting, Teen Culture, Teen Success
In a separate post, I quoted Dr. Jay Giedd, the pioneering brain researcher who discovered that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is still under development during a child’s adolescence, that this is the “smart” area of the brain, and that wiring the PFC...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescent Brain, Alcohol, Drugs, Education, Teen Success
For readers who are unfamiliar with Dr. Jay Giedd’s work, he entered the Residency Program at the Menninger School of Psychiatry, transferred to the Barrow Neurological Institute and completed his residency in psychiatry in 1989. He was a postgraduate fellow in...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Education, Encouragement, Guest Blog Posts, Parenting, Parenting Blogs, Parenting Books, Self-Esteem
The second 10 years of a child’s life is their last opportunity to prepare for the challenges of adult life. This guest post was written by Elisabeth Stitt, a parenting expert who focuses on middle school adolescent children. She is the author of Parenting as a...
