Change Your Brain Every Day - The Big Brain Issue of Sending Kids To College at 18

Episode Date: July 19, 2017

Mental health issues among college students are on the rise, and often times these problems have roots in the parenting techniques applied during upbringing. Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen highlight some of the issues a parent faces when trying to adequately prepare their son or daughter for their eventual path to independence, including overprotection, supervision, culture shock, being in-touch with the current culture, and the role that the rate of brain development plays

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome, everyone. We love the testimonials, so please keep them coming. This is from Kathy. So glad I found you. My son had brain cancer four years ago and is doing great today and just got married. We're constantly looking for information, new ideas, and recipes. Thank you so much. Well, that's why we're here. We're here to help you have a better brain and a better life to teach you.

It's a war. I mean, in our society, it's a war. And everywhere you go, someone is trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you early, addict you to a gadget, pour this god-awful news into your head repeatedly uh i know the president has different names for cnn i've always called it the crisis news network because they highlight whatever terrible thing is happening in the world and it's to frighten you to get you to continue to come back and there are consequences to this war. There's actually a new study. Yeah, this is really scary and sad. So you think, you know, college age, that time in your life

should be the most exciting time in your life. You're finishing college, you're starting a career, you're getting married. But new study shows that mental health problems are rising. This was an NBC News, actually. And it showed that, well, you already know this, but more than 75% of all mental health conditions begin before the age of 24. I actually did not know that. So I found that really surprising. And that college age, I thought this was really interesting. Now, this actually sort of makes sense when you think about it from this perspective.

You think of it as this exciting time in life, but being away from home for the first time, access to alcohol and drugs, the rigorous demands of academic life, all lead to anxiety and depression. And I've heard you say numerous times that kids leave home too early, which I always thought was kind of a crazy thing to say. I'm like, no, it's great. Let them go. Get them out. send them to college it's exciting for them and for you right but maybe that's not right except the brain is not finished developing until you're 25 and girls and more likely 28 in boys so based on our imaging work we've seen the brain is undergoing wild development, especially in the front part of the brain during that time.

And so less supervision, more bad food, more stress, less sleep, more alcohol, more drugs. It's the prescription for disaster. And what I've often seen is that kids that are doing okay, not great, but okay, so their parents are sort of glad to see them go because it's less stress at home, and they go away to school and they have their first psychotic break. Right. Or they have their first episode of major depression,

or they try to kill themselves. And it's just heartbreaking. And this study says, you know, in the last couple of years, it's actually getting worse that mental health issues are accelerating. It's part of the whole brain warriors way issue that because of how we eat in our society and the habits in our society and the addictions to gadgets and porn and so on

is kids are having, and let me tell you this other statistic you may not know. On average, it's 11 years from the time a child first has their mental health symptoms, anxiety, depression, focus problems, impulse control issues. It's 11 years before they see a professional. Oh, that's really scary. For the first time, it's 11 years so children suffer for a decade or longer and when they go away to school and you rip that social support out because the mean girls just don't go away in high school that they're there doesn't end

right that bullying is there in colleges. Think about hazing in colleges. And professors who, quite frankly, don't care if you turn in your homework. Right. Right? I mean, they're just happy to flunk you. They're not going to support you. So I thought this was really interesting. Another point that they make is to one of the contributors, what's contributing to it.

This generation has grown up with instant access via the internet to everything. This has led to challenges with frustration tolerance and delaying gratification. Now, I know that to be true because we have a 13-year-old at home who we're very, very close. We're very open. We're very honest about things. And so, yeah, I think I'm one of the parents who knows about what's really going on. And I have to tell you, most of the parents I know don't know what's going on with their kids. So most of the parents I know don't actually really realize that almost all the kids have seen porn like on their phones at school regularly. It's a regular occurrence that they're sending around the new thing is it's called, they're called nudies. And it's like, it's not a thing that happens occasionally to someone and it ruins their social life. It's like a common occurrence

that makes kids popular now to send nude photos and send them around on Snapchat. Okay, and you put, you don't put your face in it, I guess, but you put just enough of something of yourself that people know who it is. So this isn't like an occasional thing.

This is happening more and more regularly. So we're very close to our daughter. Didn't Chloe say it was like 30%? Yeah, of people that she knows at the local high school, at the public high school. So she has chosen to really not go to that school for a reason. But it's interesting how many parents don't actually know these things. And what I find fascinating is that a lot of the kids who their parents think are the good kids, like,

they're not, they're engaging in this stuff. They're engaging in the vaping and the smoking pot and the, you know, the photos going around and all of these things that are happening. And I see my daughter's Snapchat. We look at it regularly. And she's got her friends passed out in a pizza box from drinking too much alcohol at a party. And I'm like, what? These are the kids at high school. They're not people she hangs out with, but she knows them.

And they're going to parties and they're doing this stuff. And I'm grateful. And she just graduated from eighth grade. Eighth grade. And I'm just grateful that I have one of those kids who doesn't like getting in trouble. She doesn't want to be a part of that scene, right? She chose to be homeschooled because she just didn't like it. So I'm going to give some very controversial advice.

But I've thought about this a lot over the last 35 years because I'm also a child psychiatrist. And I've seen many, many troubled kids. I actually don't think parents should send kids away when they're 18. The brain is not finished developing until they're 25. It's a critically important time. And if you are a child, your teen's been struggling. They tend to isolate themselves. They can be pretty irritable or anxious, have social problems that I'm just not a fan of sending them away to another state or, you know, until they're 20 or 22, depending on their level of maturity. And so I'm actually a fan of community colleges and people go, well, how can you do anything? Well, when I got out of the military, I went to Orange Coast College, which

is a community college. I hang in their hall of fame, which is cool. I know, I find that interesting. Neither you or I were 4.0 in high school right we had to work really hard i think work ethic wins hands down over just this whole natural right never tell a kid they're smart right tell them always tell them they work hard right um praise them for the work ethic praise them for for working hard and it's okay to supervise them just a little bit longer. And if you have a child that has ADD, and I've told many, many parents this, I said, the research shows they're three to five years behind, they're emotionally behind their chronological age. So if they're 18, they may only be emotionally 13 or 15. You never send a 13 or 15-year-old away from home.

Never tell them that, right? I mean, that'll just hurt their feelings. It won't be helpful at all. But you just want to supervise them longer one of my add daughters she didn't get her driver's license so she was nearly 18 because i knew she's gonna kill somebody i just i knew it and she wasn't thrilled about it but but it was okay it was okay so one thing that i've actually gotten criticized a little bit for um which i think is really interesting is we have a really good kid i mean like an exceptional kid sometimes i'm like

i look in the mirror and i'm like what i pray about it and i'm like how how did i end up with this kid she's pretty amazing but i really do think this is one of the reasons i've never seen it as my job to over protect her which i see a lot where we live to over shelter over protect and then all of a sudden they go away to middle school and it's like this culture shock so they've been over nurtured over protected over you know coddled and then we throw them to the wolves all of a sudden and at least where we live middle school is like this big culture shock from what they had when they were in elementary school. I've always seen it as my job not to shelter my daughter from what she's going to experience in life, but to prepare her for it. So we're very, very open with her. And I spend a lot of time preparing her to the point of shocking her a little bit about what

she's going to encounter. I'm not joking. So, but when she- Let's go with prepare. Oh, but sometimes it's a little shocking. I she's going to encounter i'm not joking so but when let's go with prepare prepare but sometimes it's a little shocking i don't want her to be surprised right i would rather her learn it from us than to go to school or go out somewhere and hear it from someone else you know i've always told her the truth i have a different spin on this the secret to why chloe is doing so well for For years, you read to her. Well, that's part of it. That's one piece. I wrote a book once called

Healing the Hardware of the Soul. And in that book, there's a chapter on how to make your child a Democrat or Republican or anything you want. And if you want your child to pick your values, you have to spend time with them. You have to build a positive relationship with them, which is what we, but you know, or you, have done ever since she was a baby.

But at the same time, by doing that, preparing her and telling her the truth, even when the truth is a little weird and uncomfortable to talk about, she then me right so then she's a psychiatrist so we're always talking about weird stuff right so she goes to school and she realizes she's one of the few kids who's actually prepared who's like huh i already knew this was coming she's totally not shocked by it so she's not shocked by it so if you prepare them the right way and don't and don't act like you were perfect definitely not definitely they know you're lying by the way so one of two things happens when you when you act like you were perfect either maybe you didn't in you know encounter or engage in those things so one of two things

happens they know you're lying or they think you've got no clue about the current world the way it is and so they're not going to talk to you so that's not and you don't listen right which is such an important factor gotta listen so um but i think that's part of mental illness in children is not the parents fault no so that's important i mean obviously if you're an alcoholic and you contribute to chronic stress in their lives, you're playing a part. I mean, let's be honest about this. But it's critical to the best protections and treatments about mental health problems. When I was in Massachusetts speaking to the high school kids last week,

the most important thing, I signed books literally for six hours straight. I know, I was there. It was crazy. And they all came up to me and they said, the one thing I said that stood out to them most was that I started with no one wants to see a psychiatrist. No one wants to be labeled as crazy, defective or abnormal, but everybody wants a better brain.

So what if mental health was really brain health and they you know hundreds of times that night and the next day they said that's what sticks with me i want to be a researcher to prove that to be true so by taking care of their brains, protecting their brains from injuries, from toxins, from bad food, you're actually helping to protect their mental health. with your child or even your college age kids if you want them to be safe going away when they do go away they've got to know they can reach out for help i mean i think that's the hardest thing is they just don't want to your point to be defective so they don't reach out for help now and when you get depressed you isolate right yourself and then your thoughts can get pretty dark right so prepare them prepare them, prepare them and tell them what to look for. And be connected and don't send them away too soon. You're listening

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