Your teenager troubles you? Read on ...

It was an inconsequential, and yet a serious, chat with "S" about parenting and children.  Coming from different backgrounds and age didn't seem to matter at all when he and I speculated that the troubling adolescent behavior is coded somewhere in the human genes only to ensure that the child will wean away from the parent.  Else, given the unique ways in which humans take care of their young, well, this split might not happen--in an extreme case--and that could threaten the propagation.

Hey, every casual conversation doesn't have to be about politics, you know.

Speaking of which, did you catch this beauty from Bill Maher on the allegation in the book that Sarah Palin did cocaine?  Maher said, “Sarah Palin doing cocaine? That’s ridiculous. That stuff can make you yammer like an imbecile.”

Ok, stay focused here. Adolescent behavior. No, for the final time, this post on adolescent behavior is not about Palin :)

One of the typical adolescent attitude is towards risk--they seem to care less about actions that we older folks might think are way too risky.  

Teens take more risks not because they don't understand the dangers but because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where risk can get them something they want, they value the reward more heavily than adults do.

Interesting.  I had always worked with the assumption that the teenage behavior is framed by the context of inadequate information about the risks.  But, if they are aware of the risks, at levels comparable to adult understanding, then it has tremendous implications for public policies too, right?  Ok, I am getting ahead of myself.  The researchers add:

"They didn't take more chances because they suddenly downgraded the risk," says Steinberg. "They did so because they gave more weight to the payoff."
Researchers such as Steinberg and Casey believe this risk-friendly weighing of cost versus reward has been selected for because, over the course of human evolution, the willingness to take risks during this period of life has granted an adaptive edge. Succeeding often requires moving out of the home and into less secure situations. "The more you seek novelty and take risks," says Baird, "the better you do." This responsiveness to reward thus works like the desire for new sensation: It gets you out of the house and into new turf.

Risks and the high that comes from novelty, which are further enhanced in the company of peers.  Gets them out of the parents' shadows:

The move outward from home is the most difficult thing that humans do, as well as the most critical—not just for individuals but for a species that has shown an unmatched ability to master challenging new environments. In scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain in the ass. But they are quite possibly the most fully, crucially adaptive human beings around. Without them, humanity might not have so readily spread across the globe.

A painful aspect in parenting.  But, a critical part of the remarkable success we humans have had as a species.

Hmmm ... so, "S" and I were really on to something in that casual chat; maybe I should forward this to him.