By: Nina Huang

Do you feel like zoning out when you hear your mother’s voice? I don’t mean to be mean or offensive but to those moms out there, your child may or may not be listening to you. But don’t worry! It’s a common thing for teens to drown out their mom’s voice and there is a reason. For those teens out there, don’t fret, because there is nothing wrong with you.

Explanation

When you were a child, you may have felt like you couldn’t live without your parents, and they always say, “Stranger danger!” They say that to get you prepared for the outside world, or for facts you might not know yet. But it ain’t the same for teens. Teens have been living with their parents for such a long time that they may feel tired and bored with it. They are associated more with the outside world, and they have enough “common sense” to live more independently.

Studies

Daniel Abrams, a neuroscientist, led a research group that analyzed the brains of seven-to-16-year-olds. He discovered that the words in their brains were basically … gibberish. When a teenager’s body is forming, her brain may not pay attention to certain things, unlike when she was younger. This usually happens at age 13 or 14 of a person’s life. The article states, “Here’s why: As kids grow up, they expand their social connections way beyond their family. So their brains need to begin paying more attention to that wider world. That’s exactly as it should be, Abrams adds: ‘When a teen leaves their family (with a good-bye I hope), he or she will rely more on people they know other than their family.’

So to sum it up, teens may or may not be ignoring their parents because they need to expand to the wider world.