Mark Oestreicher
Group/Simply Youth Ministry, 2012, 72 pp., $,6.99
Parents may remember the commercial with the tag line: “This is your brain on drugs.” Oestreicher’s pithy A Parent’s Guide to Understanding Teenage Brains will have parents whispering, “This is your teen on brains.” In essence, for a 12,000-word book, this guide packs a wallop—and parents will learn some medicine, psychology, sociology and a bit of theology in these brief exposures.
In the event parents have been unobservant or have not figured out the basics of the teenage brain…well, teenage brains aren’t like adult brains. Kids are different. They are still developing. Oestreicher does an excellent job of telling parents what this means.
Younger teens, as the author notes, still are developing abstract thought. As far as faith is concerned, kids still are feeling their way along the ledge of the literal until they can develop deeper patterns in the brain that allow them access to larger, more abstract thoughts. Not all teenagers, of course, are at the same place in their brain development.
The author closes the book by detailing some of the latest discoveries about the teen brain, and some parents might want to put away their preconceived notions about their teenagers and jump directly to the end of the book to find out how it all turns out. Parents: Keep this guide in your pocket until your kids leave home. You will wear it out.
