Explaining Adolescence

Most of my teaching career dealt with the age group known as early adolescents. There are any number of less flattering terms to describe this rather awful stage of life, but for those young parents out there who have yet to encounter the phenomenon, I would like to educate you as to what happens, and more importantly, why. I know, there will be those with fancy-smancy degrees who will say that this is speculative and others who will label it pure stercus (check Latin dictionary if needed). But this is what I have theorized over the years and I'm sticking with it.
You see, at or around the age of 12, a young child's head suddenly grows very rapidly and some of those long stringy pieces of neuron that developed so neatly for the previous twelve years are stretched to their limit and snap. Picture if you would, doing this to, say, the Bronx. Suddenly the Bruckner Boulevard would have a 500 ft. wide canyon in the middle of it. People living on East Tremont couldn't make their way west for love nor money. Millions trapped in homes, babies howling, dogs and cats gone rabid. Get the idea? Now the highway department would be tasked with fixing this mess, but with bond issues etc. and finger-pointing galore, it will take years. Such is the case with your adolescent.
And lest you think, dear parent, that all of that love and attention will get you through these dark ages unscathed, think again. Because added to the sounds of spaghetti-like strands of nerve cells snapping apart, is the dark rumbling from the world down lower, signalling that hormones are flooding every single available cavity in the body, and awakening terrible, giggly beast.

You may believe dear reader, that your adolescence was nothing like the train wreck herein described, but honestly, how reliable is the memory of a brain-damaged child? It is the process of historical revisionism that allows us to utter phrases like "Well, when I was your age...". Yeah right, pal.

After a few years in hormone hell, we teachers began to recognize the uninitiated parents who scheduled the parent conferences intent on finding answers to this new problem with which they were burdened. They would wander into a classroom in one of two conditions- shellshocked or mad as hell.
The shellshocked parents asked what could be done and if the school psychologist could intervene, as they were sure their little Elroy was on his way to a stint in the slammer if intervention wasn't arranged.
The mad as hell folks always cracked me up, because the first question out of mom and/or dad's mouth was "What have you people done to my son/daughter?" They were convinced, often by other parents who had gone before them, that we were training there little angels to combative, and nothing would convince them otherwise. Any response to this question would be followed by "And you think WE are responsible for this situation?" Nope. Spaghetti brains. But in all of my years in public education, I never screwed up my courage enough to say that. Regrets, I have a few as Sinatra might sing.