COVID and the Teenage Brain

Being cooped up at home is difficult for everyone: adults, children, tweens and teens. But being in close proximity with parents for most of the time poses a special challenge for teenagers.

The developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst Erik Erickson famously said that adolescence is a time of exploring one’s identity. The teenage years are a time for exploring one’s ideals, goals, and values. Although parents play a role in messaging good values to their children while they are growing up, if parents push their teenager too far into conforming to their views—the parent’s religion, their choice of a college their teen is expected to attend, and so forth—the teen may face identity confusion. Erikson says the adolescent stage of psychological development is a time of either creating one’s identity or slipping into identity confusion.

In my practice I am finding that isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic is placing a burdensome strain on many teenager’s relationships with their parents. Teens have less opportunity to interact with their friends and explore new social roles, which makes exploration of their own unique interests and identity more difficult.

If a teen occasionally experiments with smoking, vaping, or drinking (as most teenagers do at some point these days), parents are more likely to notice signs of these behaviors because they are working from home in close proximity to their teen. Parents then are more likely to over-react to their teen’s exploratory behaviors and think in terms of mental disorders.

One high school senior named Lara told me that all of her friends were seeing therapists and many were on psychiatric drugs. She wondered if she needed a therapist in order to cope with the stress of applying to college. The real problem was that her parents had a very short list of ivy League universities that were acceptable to them, while their daughter thought she would be happier with a local college which some of her friends planned to attend. She was feeling anxiety and depression because she was feeling pressured by her over-stressed parents.

A simple conversation with her parents in which I told them to back off and let their daughter make her own decision was all that it took. Lara’s parents told me they were both very stressed by the isolation that COVID had imposed.

Jameson, a high school junior, had always gotten good grades and was, in his parents’ words, “a good kid.” Lately, however, he had been coming home late for curfew and his parents smelled alcohol on him. Jameson’s parents over-reacted by grounding him for a month and taking away his cell phone. Jameson became very angry and began to use cuss words to his parents.

Infuriated by Jameson’s disrespect, his parents took him to a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with depression and conduct disorder. The psychiatrist wanted to put Jameson on an anti-depressant and an anti-psychotic. Jameson’s parents were not comfortable with the side effects of these drugs about which they had educated themselves on the internet. One of their friends had read my book, and recommended that the parents consult me.

Jameson’s parents, Lillian and Arnold, were stressed out by the COVID situation. They were both working from home, while Jameson and his 10-year-old sister were home attending school online. Their daughter had a learning disability and needed constant support and monitoring. Lillian also had been newly diagnosed with a health problem for which she needed physical therapy. The therapy had to be done online because of COVID. Lillian and Arnold were well-intentioned parents and wanted the best for their children. They were understandably upset by Jameson’s drinking and breaking curfew in recent months. In talking to Jameson, I found out that his misbehavior had only occurred a few times. It was not an ongoing pattern. The behaviors had started when Jameson had started to hang out with two new friends who were, he said, probably not the best influence on him. Jameson also felt that his parents were over-reacting because they had such high standards and goals for him.

As I got to know the family, I had to agree. A few sessions of family therapy—and no diagnosis or psychiatric drugs—were all it took to improve the situation between Jameson and his parents. Jameson apologized for his misbehavior and his parents apologized for over-reacting.

Having ideals and goals for one’s teens is a natural parental feeling. But in the particular developmental stage of adolescence, as Erickson wisely points out, teens are going to explore new behaviors and roles. Unless unacceptable behaviors become a persistent pattern, it is best for parents to have appropriate consequences for unacceptable behaviors and not over-react out of CoOVID-induced stress or disappointment in their teen.