Abstract
Think of a time when you wondered what was going on inside the head of a child or teenager that you were working with. Are you a parent trying to navigate the tricky space between being too permissive and being overbearingly authoritative? Are you wondering how to help them develop refusal skills, or are you afraid they might ask you if you used drugs or alcohol when you were their age? Or perhaps you are a youth worker, pastor, or family therapist wanting a book on brain development to recommend to parents so they can better understand the behavior of the children and teens in their lives. This colorful if rather bulky text with its whimsical and catchy title might help.
Penned by a therapist, educator, self-confessed “person in long-term recovery,” with decades of experience “working with adolescents and adults suffering from mental illness, behavioral problems and substance use disorders,” The NeuroWhereabouts Guide helps the reader understand high-risk behavior associated with different developmental stages of children and teens and offers a proactive prevention model. By understanding the chronology of a child's neurodevelopment, Dr. Crystal Collier writes, parents can “set realistic expectations, apply best parenting practices, and prevent risky behavior” at each stage (p. 3).
In her introduction intriguingly titled “Read this first: Brain-savvy parents start prevention early,” Collier lays out the assumption that informs the entire text: “It is just as important to know the whereabouts of your child's brain development as it is to know your child's physical whereabouts—where they are hanging out and who they are spending time with” (p. 3). Collier presents the developmental stages of a child's brain maturation as a tool towards what she calls “Brain-Savvy Parenting”: understanding sources of risky behavior in kids and how to guide them protectively based on their developmental stage (p. 2). The key, she writes, is having the right information to act on at the right time. Many adult mental health and substance abuse challenges are birthed during the teenage years, she adds (p. 6). Parents can proactively act as their children's stopgap prefrontal cortex during those formative years by securing attachment, creating boundaries, and enforcing rules to prevent high-risk behavior (p. 8).
The next five chapters flesh out the theory behind these claims. The first two focus on how a child's brain-based decision-making development can be stymied by risky behavior if left unguided. The next three chapters offer stage-specific knowledge and protective tools for parents of elementary, middle, and high school, followed by a final chapter that lists tips, scripts, and resources to support brain-savvy parenting.
Chapter 1 creatively introduces the novice parent to two main phases of brain development, making the science accessible with cartoons, subtitles, and diagrams and pictures of MRI scans. For the first 12 years, a child's brain grows about 200 billion brain cells or neurons. This makes learning cardinal skills easy, setting parents up for success with directive styles. During the next phase till about age 25, the frontal lobe or prefrontal cortex develops, reorganizing the neurons to enable faster and more abstract thinking. When stimulated, neuron messengers (myelin strings) connect to other neurons by forming dendrites, the biological anatomy of learning. Unused neurons are discarded on a “use it or lose it” basis (p. 29) down to about 100 billion by age 25. Brain-Savvy parenting for this stage is as a trainer, noticing, teaching, and praising executive function skills as the frontal lobe grows. Collier also introduces the reward-seeking a limbic system of the brain in this chapter, calling it the not-so-smart behavioral accelerator.
In the second chapter, Collier outlines the anatomy of the onset of risky behavior. The limbic system, which is fully developed by teenage (41), is responsible for how our brain responds to a stimulus, triggering survival or pleasure modes. As the pleasure “accelerator,” it constantly needs regulation by the frontal lobe which is still not fully formed till about age 25. Pleasure is registered by the production of the “accelerator fuel” or dopamine, a neurotransmitter that sends signals across the synapse or space between neurons at the end of the dendrites. Risky behavior and substance abuse can spike dopamine production beyond a person's normal pleasure or hedonic threshold, causing synaptic damage through the creation of excessive dendrites and receptors. This structural changes in the limbic system with abnormally strengthened connections can override the supervisory role of the frontal lobe, arresting its development (p. 55). Experimentation with risky behavior such as pornography and underage sex, drugs, and alcohol, can lead to misuse and abuse. Crossing that invisible, genetically determined structural tolerance line leads to dependence, the transition from choice to illness (p. 48).
The next three chapters present information and tools for parents of specific age-stage kids. In each, Collier draws from a cache of risky behaviors to watch out for, how they manifest themselves for each age group, and executive skills that cultivate early prevention. This list that recurs rather repetitively in the three chapters comprises alcohol use, binge drinking, pornography use, suicidal behavior, self-injury, dating violence, marijuana use, nicotine/tobacco use, gambling, illegal ‘street drug’ use, driving under the influence, risky sexual behavior, e-cigarette use and vaping, bullying/cyberbullying, eating disorder behavior, sexting or sending nude photos, video game addiction and technology overuse (p. 5). The repetition is to allow parents to only read the chapter relevant to their child's age. Chapter 6 wraps up the book with tools, scripts, and resources “grounded in the science,” that support EF skills and risk-preventing strategies.
For elementary school (chapter 3), Collier prescribes securing attachment as the key parental task for infants and preteens. They should be authoritative (not authoritarian) and empathetic, setting boundaries and staying involved. Family codes that utilize B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning offer a strategy Collier dubs B-Mod or behavior modification that applies rewards and consequences (p. 82) to train self-control, task initiation, and prioritizing. These are the key executive function skills to cultivate for this age group. The elementary school age watchlist for parents includes digital dangers (must supervise age-appropriate screen use), aggression and bullying, and the potential onset of mental health issues (p. 101).
In middle school (chapter 4), phase 2 brain development begins, and with it increases novelty seeking, stress, and argumentativeness (p. 117). An eye-catching graphic, worthy of an emoji that the parents of teenagers would easily identify with is introduced: the power struggle worm which parents are taught to avoid biting (p. 122). Strategies for communication include what Collier calls duct tape therapy; escaping the worm's hook by taking deep breaths, verbally acknowledging, and validating the child's emotions, and gently asking clarifying questions such as, “tell me more.” Puberty brings with it egocentric thinking, imaginary audiences, and personal fables. Peer and sibling influences offer a mixed bag. Brain-savvy parents promote abstract reasoning, problem solving, judgment, and empathy by being intentionally present and catching situational opportunities. Cyberbullying, substance abuse, dating (and sexting) and potential mental health and eating disorders are among the things to watch out for.
Chapter 5 discusses the high school years that bring even more sensation seeking, peer importance, resistance and arguing, and other evidence of abstract thinking. Kohlberg's moral development transitions to social contracts, hopefully leading to principle-based decision making (pp. 183, 197). Parents are instructed to communicate assertively and avoid passive aggression and getting hooked by the power struggle worm. Use the 90/10 rule, listening more and using validation sandwich strategies. Continue to help them build newly emerging executive function skills, which include impulse control, frustration tolerance, problem solving, decision making, and empathy. The watchlist delves more into alcohol and substance abuse, mental health issues, and teen sexuality including sexual violence issues. The final chapter, “Tools, Scripts and Resources” provides an impressive variety of starting points, fillable forms, and resources beyond the text that scaffold recommendations from all the previous chapters.
By penning this text, Dr. Collier bridges the gap between professional counselor/psychologist/mental health scholar/practitioner knowledge, and the ordinary parent working hard to “train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6, NKJV). It is a reference tool that parents can search for when at a loss with their elementary to high school children. However, it is better to read proactively, so that they can be armed with the big neurowhereabouts picture and adopt parenting strategies before their children get to the age-stages. Collier makes what might otherwise be dauntingly technical and academic information accessible to parents with the help of an impressive list of illustrations and graphics sources (see pp. 352–358). The infographics and conversational language in large print, strategically repeating important terms and information, all laid out in colorful magazine-style boxes and columns, is validated by a comprehensive collection of referenced literature to offer parents “scientific justification to act as [their children's] frontal Lobe until their(s) … is fully developed” (p. 8). Sometimes the repetition and resources trip over themselves, an example being contradictory information on when the limbic system becomes fully developed: in chapter 1, the claim is age 25 (22), while in chapter 2 and thereafter it is age 12 (41). No explanation of this tension from different referenced sources is offered.
The NeuroWhereabouts Guide mostly targets parents of children and teenagers, promising to make them brain-savvy. It would be a good discussion resource for groups of parents, teachers, and youth workers, as well as some mature teenagers and young adults. Christian educators at all levels would find it easy to integrate faith perspectives with Collier's claims. Though Collier also includes those working with young adults among her target readership (2), she makes peripheral reference to their brain development as part of phase two but doesn’t really address their specific developmental needs as emerging adults (ages 18 to mid-twenties) in the way that has been defined by other scholars (seminal example edited by J. J. Arnett and J. L. Tanner, Emerging adults in America: coming of age in the twenty-first Century, American Psychological Association, 2006).
Collier refers to each age-group's moral development per Lawrence Kohlberg (pp. 183, 197), but the book is not written from an overtly Christian worldview. Nevertheless, the values espoused by her assumptions are wholesome, and easy connections can be made to faith formation. To be overtly Christian, the text would be anchored on the telos of the likeness of Christ (Luke 2:52). A Christian worldview would also emphasize more input from the community of faith in parenting, as well as the role of practices such as prayer and Scripture study enabled by the Holy Spirit.
Collier's focus on mitigating problems and risky behavior in developing children and youth, however, reveals a “deficit model” of youth development, akin to the advent of the “storm and stress” adolescent studies at the beginning of the 20th century (G. S. Hall, Adolescence: Its psychology and its relations to psychology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education, volumes 1 and 2, Appleton, 1904). A more attractive contemporary positive psychology regards children and youth from a Positive Youth Development (PYD) perspective. PYD focuses on nurturing positive developmental outcomes such as competence, confidence, connection, character, caring, and contribution; that carry the additional reward of minimizing risky and negative behavior concerns (see R. Lerner, C. Brentano, E. Dowling & P. Anderson, “Positive Youth Development: Thriving as the basis of personhood and civil society, New Directions for Youth Development, 95., 2002, pp. 11–33). However, many of the “Tools and scripts” in chapter 6 of the text do implicitly align with what PYD's “Developmental Assets” are that promote thriving (40 Developmental Assets for adolescents: ages 12–18, Search Institute, 2006).
Overall, I highly recommend this informative resource to all who work with children and youth, including those who like me might deeply sigh, “I wish I had known all this right from the beginning.” Collier might respond with “start from where you are.”