The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine Read Free Book Online

relate to all the changes in her teen son's brain. When Dan and Kate came into my office the next week, I said to Kate, "Don't worry. It takes about eight to nine years for the teen brain to complete the remodeling it began when he entered puberty . Jake's hormonally enhanced brain circuits will stabilize when he's in his late teens or early twenties ."
    Kate's face fell. "I'm not sure I'll live that long. This boy's killing me." I could see that she was only half joking.
Dan turned to me and said, "Look, Jake's just like every other teenage boy that ever walked the planet Earth. He's gonna look at some porn. He's gonna blow off his homework, get in some fights, and drool over girls. Once he's grounded for a while, he'll come around."

HOMEWORK WARS
    Even though Jake was now grounded until he completed every neglected English assignment, it was still hard for him to focus his brain on schoolwork. If we could watch Jake's brain with a miniature brain scanner as he sat down to do homework, we'd see his prefrontal cortex, or PFC--the area for attention and good judgment--flickering with activity as it tried to force him to focus on his studies . We'd also see bursts of vasopressin and testosterone pulsing through his brain, activating his sex and aggression circuits . When an image of Dylan's smirking face registered in Jake's brain, his stress hormone, cortisol, would start climbing . Now his threat and fear center--the amygdala--would activate . And then, as an image of Zoe in that tight sweater she'd been wearing in class today flashed across his secondary visual system, we'd see his sexual circuits activate, distracting him further. Next we'd see his PFC struggling to regain focus on his English homework. But it would be too late. His PFC was no match for his sexual daydreams. Soon, homework would be the last thing on his mind.
    Teen boys aren't trying to be difficult. It's just that their brains aren't yet wired to give much thought to the future. Getting boys to study and do homework has always been more of a battle for parents than getting girls to do the same, and with today's high-tech temptations, the battle can feel like a war. Studying instead of doing something fun online just doesn't make sense to teen boys. Research shows that it takes extraordinarily intense sensations to activate the reward centers of the teen boy brain, and homework just doesn't do it . Fortunately for Jake, his father came up with both a stick and a carrot--the threat of being grounded without his computer, cell phone, or TV for the next month versus a pair of tickets to a playoff game if he maintained a B average and turned in all his homework. I have to admit I was a little surprised when Jake's grades immediately improved. Somehow Jake took his dad's threat and reward to heart.
    I knew that even boys who are getting good grades can begin to hate school by the time they're in tenth or eleventh grade . So the next time I met with Jake, I asked him if there was anything at all that he looked forward to at school. He raised his eyebrows as if I must be joking and said, "No. We're not allowed to leave the building or even open our cell phones on campus. It's so stupid. It's like jail." I could see that this was going to be a tough year for Jake and for his parents. Everything about our school system is in direct conflict with teen boys' adventurous, freedom-seeking brains. So we shouldn't be surprised that boys cause 90 percent of the disruptions in the classroom or that 80 percent of high-school dropouts are boys . Boys get 70 percent of the Ds and Fs . They're smart enough to get good grades, but soon they just don't care. And it doesn't help that school start times are totally out of sync with the teen brain's sleep cycle.

SLEEPY AND BORED
    Jake had English class first thing in the morning and said it took everything he had just to stay awake. He said, "I never fall asleep before two in the morning. On weekends I sleep late, but it pisses off