Robin Marantz Henig Quotes

There's a science to brain development. The brains of teenage boys are crowded with impulse and adrenaline. By the time they hit their 20s, their brains are dominated by conscience and reason.

What adolescence is about is by trial and error, honing a frontal cortex that is going to be more optimal by the time you're 25.

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.

The idea that the brain is not fully formed until you are almost 30 years old has already been introduced, and the Supreme Court already has based two rulings on it.

The most dangerous age is 14. If you know any teenagers, this might not come as a surprise, but research has confirmed that risk-taking peaks during this exact moment in mid-adolescence.

Looking at me now, it might be hard to believe that I didn't even have hair in my armpits when I graduated from high school. I guarantee you I was the last guy to go through puberty in my class.

This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Our first flaws were emerging, but they were being corrected. Blurry vision could be fixed invisibly with the magic of the contact lens. Crooked teeth were pulled straight with braces. Spotty skin could be chemically cleared. Some girls were turning beautiful. A few boys were growing tall.

We are like a rider on top of a gigantic elephant. We can steer the elephant, and if he's not busy, he'll go where we want, but if he has other desires, he'll often go where he wants. How can one control the elephant? In part, this comes with maturity. In part, this comes with the development of your frontal cortex, so the frontal areas of the brain are especially involved in self-control, in suppressing your initial instinct to act. This is why teenagers are so impulsive. So it's terrible to allow the death penalty for teenagers, because they really don't have working brains yet.

I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box.

Emotional life grows out of an area of the brain called the limbic system, specifically the amygdala, whence come delight and disgust and fear and anger.

Going through puberty as a young girl is so confusing. This monster invades your body, changes things and makes things grow, and no one tells you what's going on.

Adolescence as the time when an individual 'recapitulates' the savage stage of the race's past.

Men and women are different. I don't think men grow a brain until 26 or even 30. Girls mature a lot quicker.

Puberty extends into your twenties, for sure, and some people don't get over that until much later in life. I feel like I'm just starting to get over puberty - basically twenty years of insufferable, totally self-obsessed hell.

The early development of the human brain is extremely important for setting the table, if you will, for potential future accomplishment.

There's only one thing harder than living in a home with an adolescent - and that's being an adolescent. The moodiness, the volatility, the wholesale lack of impulse control, all would be close to clinical conditions if they occurred at another point in life. In adolescence, they're just part of the behavioral portfolio.

The years from about eight to twelve constitute a unique period of human life.

Children who have been in work for a long time suddenly get a thud down to earth once the cuteness fades, hips widen, voices drop and jawlines strengthen.

Puberty hit me pretty hard. All of a sudden, I woke up, and I had really curly hair.

I'm growing into my manhood body.

I hit a big growth spurt between my 10th and 11th grade years.

I think you do a lot of your growing as a human being between the ages of 13 and 18.

It's interesting because the first batch of really struggling with control and escape and all that happened when I was nearing adolescence, and the second one came with the onset of early menopause.

I was quite short and chubby until I was 14, when I shot up.

Kids are different. Boys and girls at 14, 15, 16 - some are more developed in the mind; some aren't... It comes down to the individual.