The only thing worse than making a mistake is keeping it bottled up inside. Learning from the mistakes of others could help you embark on the healing journey of sharing and working through a mistake of your own, with someone you trust.
The teenaged boy was the victim of what local news sources called a "social-media challenge" or "TikTok stunt" gone awry. He'd been with a group of friends who were filming the exploit, and who fled the scene without calling for help for fear of getting arrested - though, naturally, they also immediately posted video of the accident to social media.
Adolescence is second only to early childhood in the rapidity and sheer volume of changes occurring in brain development. Three different brain systems (and their interconnections) are at play: reward-driven behavior, harm avoidance, and regulatory behavior. At the same time, teens are experiencing powerful changes to their physical and sexual selves, accompanied by the hormonal cascade of puberty. During this period, there is an increase in brain receptors for dopamine, a neurotransmitter that has a strong effect on the experience of pleasure.
Time is life-time, and increasingly young adolescents want to determine how their lives are personally spent. The outcome for parents is that they can feel rushed by youthful demands, while it can take more time for them to get what they requested.
Adolescence has always been a season of becoming. One of its most striking features is the dawning awareness that childhood is ending and adulthood is coming into view. This realization touches nearly every part of a young person's life: how they think, what they value, and, increasingly, how they understand the world beyond their own front door. Yet many teens encounter a familiar frustration as they begin to speak with more complexity-the sense of being dismissed, underestimated, or gently waved aside.
