Recent research on adolescent brain development highlights the importance of youth workers knowledge on the issue.
Kelly Schwartz, adolescent psychology specialist, suggests that youth workers should remember adolescents' brains are under development.
Developments in neuroscience has made it possible not only to make assumptions about what is going on in the brain after decisions have been made, but also to see brain activity in real time during decision making.
Some of Schwartz' observations include that teens in social situations are overwhelmed by the amount of choices they have because as they develop, so does their understanding that choices involve more than right and wrong outcomes, but also the facets of motivations, intentions, etc. With the amount of new information teens are needing to process, including that things aren't always what they expect or what they seem, and information overload, Schwartz finds it surprising how many good decisions teens are able to make.
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When asked how youth workers can find a healthy balance between allowing adolescents to make choices and taking appropriate responsibility for failures, Schwartz suggests youth workers should be carefull not to overprotect kids in our attempts to provide them with success, or to fail to teach them to overcome disappointment and failure.
"We try to squash cognitive dissonance too quickly," she says. "We need to train them to deal with questions, think critically, and remain in the tension. We can also help create more understanding about the emotional and cognitive experiences by spending as much time debriefing as we do preparing for mission experiences ..."
Discussion Starters What do you feel our brains have to do with our emotions? When do you have emotional experiences with God most intensely? Do you think our brains have anything to do with our experience of God? What do you think about times when God feels absent?
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