BERLIN — We are only at the start of puberty, and I am already at my wits’ end. How did I manage to make my child cry again? My daughter Juli and I have gone through life together for 12 years now. Yet lately there are more and more moments when I do not recognize my usually sunny child. Recently, we visited a museum, an exhibition by the Japanese artist Yoko Ono.
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There was a “wishing tree” where you could write wishes on slips of paper and hang them on a branch. I wished for “world peace” and asked Juli what she had wished for. “Cool apartments,” she said.
“Cool apartments, all for you?” I joked.
“No, for everyone!” Juli shot back, indignant. I thought I had made a harmless dad joke, but Juli was deeply hurt. She felt accused of selfishness. I could not apologize enough. What was happening?
Other situations baffle me too. Lately, while we are eating dinner, Juli jumps up and practices dance moves in the living room mirror. She is suddenly affectionate or suddenly withdrawn, sometimes sad for no clear reason. And if her hair will not cooperate in the morning, the day is ruined.
An opening
Sometimes it feels as if everything we parents have done to raise our children has been wiped away. I am not the only one who finds puberty a phase that pushes me to my limits. A 2024 Gallup poll in the United States found that while 80% of parents of three to four year olds described their relationship with their children as “very good” or “excellent,” this was true for only 48% of parents of children over 13.
What I share with other parents of teenagers is a wish to look into my daughter’s head and understand what is going on inside. What sets me apart is that I actually can actually look — with the help of cutting edge science.
Scientists now recognize puberty as the most exciting phase of personality development
And what I see makes it clear that our picture of puberty is wrong. It is more than crisis and rebellion. It is an opening. Scientists now recognize puberty as the most exciting phase of personality development. Never again in life does so much change in a person’s mind. New skills take shape, character is forged, and a view of the world emerges. We are capable of flashes of genius. Researchers even hope they can treat mental illnesses during these formative years before they take hold.
The biggest problem that teenagers like my daughter face at this time is not hormones. It is me. And the rest of society, at least in the West.
I get a glimpse into Juli’s brain on the first floor of an old building on the grounds of Berlin’s Charité hospital. Clinical psychologist Peter Uhlhaas greets my daughter and me there. He leads us to a room that looks like a vault. Inside is a chair and a device that resembles a hair dryer hood. We are in the brand new PTB Charité OPM MEG Center. Here, Uhlhaas’s latest acquisition is set up: an optically pumped magnetometer. It is a device that allows very precise examinations of brain waves in a simple way, the most advanced technology in the world.
Brain activity
The OPM measures brain waves with great accuracy. The hood contains 96 highly sensitive sensors designed to listen to the brain’s activity. Juli has agreed to have her thoughts measured, the first teenage brain ever examined here at the Charité.
“Can they read my thoughts now?” my daughter asks, a little uncertain, before the heavy steel door closes. They cannot. What appears on the screens at the control station after the sensors are activated looks more like someone has thrown a plate of spaghetti against the wall, so these are Juli’s thoughts.
The researcher scrolls to the sensor signals from the back of the head. He asks Juli, through a microphone, to close her eyes. The waves now bunch together and become more rhythmic. “Ah, that is alpha,” says Uhlhaas. Alpha waves are the brain waves associated with important cognitive functions. They are closely tied to the process of maturation. I can watch structured, organized thinking as it slowly pushes toward the surface of my daughter’s mind.
Welcome to the adolescent brain. What will this machine reveal that helps me understand my child better?
Many adults remember puberty and the years that follow as a time of crisis. The carefree days of childhood are gone, while independent life still feels a long way off. We recall skin problems, awkward bodies, and bouts of sadness. This period is rarely seen for what it truly is, the phase of life in which the person we later become is formed.
Studies show that while key personality traits such as emotional regulation, impulse control, and social sensitivity are still variable at 14, they are largely established by the mid twenties. People remain malleable, but flexibility decreases noticeably. We have become ourselves. In the meantime, a great deal has happened, especially where it cannot be seen, in the brain. Science is increasingly interested in this transformation and the potential it holds.
Flashes of inspiration
Professor Uhlhaas has made the adolescent brain his specialty and has published widely on it. He is among those now filling an important gap in developmental psychology. At the start of this millennium, many thought a child’s neural development was largely complete by age 12. Today we know this is when it really takes off.
Most people understand puberty as the period roughly between 13 and 16, when girls and boys undergo physical changes due to hormonal fluctuations. It is often associated with rebellion, withdrawn teenagers, and closed doors. Some parents simply believe their offspring are not quite right in the head.
From a developmental perspective, this period needs to be viewed more broadly. The crucial changes occur between 12 and 25, during adolescence. Physical transformation is not the most significant aspect. Above all, thinking changes. Researchers like Uhlhaas observe powerful remodeling in adolescent brains that enables many new capacities. The path to that transformation is arduous. It is a neurobiological feat. Peter Uhlhaas calls it the second remodeling phase after early childhood. Many synaptic connections are pruned, while other neural pathways are strengthened. At the same time, sensitive windows open in which environmental influences have a particularly strong impact.
When Uhlhaas visualizes the changes in thinking, you see black, red, and yellow clouds of diagrams. They show oscillations in the brain. “We were able to show that oscillations, rapid rhythms, only become pronounced in adolescence,” he says. During this phase, so called gamma oscillations become as dominant as in adults. The brain finds the rhythm that marks organized thinking. It is on the rocky road to adulthood.
I do not see a young person in a neurological transition.
I see a child not doing what she should.
I have to admit that I have trouble with adolescent behavior myself. When Juli jumps up from the table because she must know what her cousin thinks of a video. When she dawdles over homework because she spends ages in front of the mirror applying blush, highlighter, or a lip mask. Then I do not see a young person in a neurological transition. I see a child not doing what she should be doing.
Person in the making
If I looked more closely, I would see a person in the making. Adolescence is not only when a child becomes an adult, but also a window in which young people can sometimes do things they will rarely repeat later. Talents and new passions surface. It is an age of insight. The mathematician Blaise Pascal formulated Pascal’s Theorem at 16. The British writer Mary Shelley invented the science fiction thriller with Frankenstein at 18. The composer Clara Schumann was 16 when she performed her own Piano Concerto in A minor.
How do young people manage such creative feats? This has often been explained socially, young people question everything. Today, researchers also look to neurons. A team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities measured the brain activity of teenagers while showing them images. They were either instructed to describe details of the image or to use it as a springboard for imagination, “Imagine you have traveled to a mysterious place.” The measurements showed that teenagers later remembered their imagined scenarios more vividly and more positively. The team offered a glimpse of what mental cinema looks like in adolescence and showed that this explosion of imagination is more powerful than rational perception.
This mental imagery is a special capacity in adolescence because it still operates without voluntary self control. Psychologist Miriam Hollarek from Erasmus University Rotterdam explains it this way: “From the standpoint of brain development, the brain at this stage is built to try out new things.” The prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning and control, is still maturing. Its connections resemble footpaths that only gradually become highways. At the same time, dopamine can be released with few brakes. “New things are particularly motivating at this age.”
That is why young people plunge into adventures without giving much thought to risk. A selfie on a skyscraper roof, why not. They also dare to do many things because there is no internal control mechanism telling them that their plan is unrealistic, a waste of energy, or disruptive.
A new world
Puberty is therefore not defined by disobedience, selfishness, and bad moods, but by mental upheaval and a firework of ideas. While the first years of development are admired with parental pride, the second great change is greeted with resentment. As if the miracle of childhood were being vandalized by youth. As the band Die Ärzte mock in the song “Junge,” “And you were such a sweet child, you were so sweet.”
This ignorance has a history. Psychoanalysts and psychologists mostly explained human behavior through the mother-child bond. The more dependent a child is on the mother, the more formative the parental influence. In Freud’s theory, puberty was a phase of “pre pleasure,” in which attention turns to the genitals and adolescents turn away from their parents. That set the tone, growing up was about drives and separation. Today we know parents miss out on a great deal if they do not accompany this period with attention, namely the birth of a new world.
While the self help shelves are full of books on infancy and early childhood, there are very few on puberty. The task of raising teenagers is apparently considered largely complete, and all that remains is to hold out until the children move out.
In other cultures, this period is viewed far more positively and experienced that way by young people. This is especially true for body image. Psychologist Karina Weichold from the University of Jena and her team studied how 13-year-old girls worldwide experience their physical changes at the start of adolescence. The result: “In Germany, the perception is particularly negative. Many girls find their changing bodies ugly or bothersome,” says Weichold. “This has a lot to do with cultural messages, with how schools, families, and the media respond to these changes.”
In Ghana, for example, there are rituals that celebrate the transition to womanhood. In Germany, many parents react with concern, about early sexuality or unwanted pregnancy. “This creates shame instead of pride,” says Weichold.
Further studies by the psychologist also suggest that perceptions of puberty are strongly shaped by national culture. In many places, young people experience it as an opportunity and a positive transition. The way they are treated, with recognition, appreciation, or rejection, strongly influences the brain during puberty, says Weichold. Relationships at this time, including with family, are crucial. Children do not have to get away with everything. “But if you label teenagers as difficult and meet them with rigid control, you block precisely the positive social experiences the brain needs then.”
Finding oneself along wonderful, rocky, and dangerous paths is exhausting, not only for children but also for parents. Raising a baby is exhausting too. Parents stay up all night and, at the same time, eagerly watch every change. That is how we should view adolescence.
How can we steer this phase better? How can we support teenagers? Neurologist Dieter Braus has some answers. He has studied adolescence for 16 years and for almost as long has given workshops to help parents prepare more consciously. Braus argues that parents often underestimate these years. He urges adults to prepare with their children: “Prevention must start no later than elementary school. If rules, values like trust, and a healthy approach to conflict are not established before the eleventh birthday, they can hardly be introduced later during the most critical phase.” If a foundation of trust is there, the chances are good that the adolescent years can be used constructively, says Braus.
Much depends on whether parents take their children’s development seriously. Parents may think they know how their children are doing, but the children’s view is often very different.
At no other time is the gap in perceived mutual understanding between parents and children wider than during adolescence. A Swedish study observed that parents believed they knew their adolescent children well and were in close contact, while the teenagers felt otherwise. Parents systematically overestimated the quality of contact. The larger this perception gap, the more likely emotional problems became, especially for girls.
Resource for life
Teenagers sense a growing gap between their feelings and those of their parents, and they withdraw. Parents respond with anger, condescension, or confrontation. What teenagers want is for their parents to try to see the world from their perspective. The better this happens, as a recent study from Israel shows, the better the parent child relationship during puberty.
A parent like me should complain less about feeling overwhelmed and pay closer attention instead. That way I could discover unexpected talents, as well as unforeseen dangers. Puberty brings psychological strain, and children need support.
Eva Bleckmann from the University of Hamburg has researched puberty and adolescence for years. She calls this period a “unique developmental milestone” in which self image is formed, parents become less central, and friends take over. School, peer groups, and family form the triangle in which young people find themselves. At the same time, the social brain changes. The ability to empathize grows, but it also makes them more sensitive to rejection.
A hurtful comment can sharply dent self esteem, says Bleckmann, while positive interactions can strengthen it. Psychologist Miriam Hollarek adds: “What young people need is psychological safety. If they grow up in an environment where they are afraid to voice ideas, perhaps even being ridiculed, they will stop taking part.” It matters that mistakes are allowed and that adolescents can always return to a safe home. “That gives them the chance to explore the world.”
Adolescence is a time when the brain is both vulnerable and receptive to therapy.
What can parents do to support teenagers during adolescence? The simplest advice is to offer as many creative opportunities as possible. US psychologist Kathryn Cullen at the University of Minnesota studies adolescent creativity. She recently published a study on the artist mindset. She says that if teenagers engage in the arts, they must be self aware, critical, open, and brave, and they must express themselves. “In our study, we were able to show that creative activity actually has a positive effect on adolescent mental health.”
Psychologist Uhlhaas advocates sensitive observation of children during adolescence. He argues that this could prevent psychological harm. Adolescence is a time when the brain is both vulnerable and receptive to therapy. “This developmental phase could be particularly important for early intervention and prevention of mental illness.” Medicine and psychology must take this period seriously, says Uhlhaas. “Not only when everything is on fire, but when the first warning signs appear.” He wants to decode those early signs with his hood at the Charité. In large scale tests, he aims to identify brain wave patterns that indicate a possible later serious mental disorder. If such predispositions were found, they could be treated while the brain is still malleable and before they set in.
A few weeks after our visit, I receive another email from Peter Uhlhaas. The wave report he prepared for my daughter turned out to be “perfectly normal.” So Juli is a perfectly ordinary teenager with a brain like a plate of spaghetti at the start of what could be a very exciting time for both of us.
I might even learn something about myself. Adolescence is when young people imagine all the possibilities before their thinking is dominated by what cannot be done. This period can be a resource for life, prompting questions like these: What did I think about at 16 that I later discarded? How would I look at my life now from that vantage point? Is it worth revisiting some of those youthful thoughts? And briefly forgetting all the inhibitions we have learned?
I want to give this exciting time with my daughter a good start. While we watch the series Modern Family together, I tell Juli I am excited to see how she develops and that she can always count on my support, even if it does not always feel that way to her. “Oh, Dad,” Juli says, “it is always so cringe when you suddenly start talking about deep stuff while we are watching TV”. Then she gets up and dances in front of the living room mirror.
