Decisions, Decisions

Wow, where did the summer go? It seems like it was just June and, bingo, the Medina County Fair is over.

Being born and raised here, the fireworks at the conclusion of the fair often signaled the fast concluding of summer. But we sure had some great weather and some memorable times with family and friends.

Recently, the common thread of most of the patients and parents’ discussions at our office has centered around going back to school…

Some parents (and fewer children) are looking forward to getting back and seeing their friends, while most of the parents and kids are reluctantly accepting the inevitable. The discussions in the office, up to senior year, are all about the same, as they center on sports, academics, drivers licenses, etc.

My seniors and parents of seniors have a whole different spin on their discussions and their stress levels…

As parents, we all want our children to be happy, successful, and enjoy their lives. And if they produce grandchildren, all the better! Over the last decade, I personally feel the importance of going to college has been greatly over emphasized as a guarantee for a successful life on earth. The discussions I have had with seniors and their parents continually center on, “What college can I get into, can I afford it, and by the way, I have no idea what I want to major in!”

Heaven forbid that one would say they want to work in the trades or they want to take some time off before starting school. The lemming rule comes into play here, “If all my friends are doing it then I must also follow along, even if it means going over a financial or emotional cliff.”

Many countries in Europe mandate that two years must be served in the military or civil service before one can apply to the halls of higher learning. This past Spring, University of Rochester Medical Center produced a great paper on the developing brain of teenagers and concluded, though fully-formed physically, the brain does not mature until 25 or 26 years of age!

Last December, all dentists in Ohio had to do their biannual renewal, which mandated viewing an Ohio Dental Association, ODA, two-hour opiate addiction awareness presentation. One of the interesting take-home messages in the presentation — the prefrontal cortex, the rational decision-making part of the brain, does not mature until 26 years of age. The researchers went on to say that adults think rationally and teens think emotionally, due to using that part of the decision-making brain that is developed, at the time of its usage.

Where adults use the rational prefrontal cortex, teens use the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain. My mother, grabbing me by the ear, always told me when I messed up, “What were you thinking?” Or, “Were you even thinking?” I would always tell her that yes, I was thinking; but little did I know I was thinking with the only part of my brain that was currently available for the task at-hand… and it was not the right part!

Where does this leave us with our original dilemma of career and college choices?

Let us take another look at the question, now that we better understand the decision-making skill level of our senior.

At this point, I must be very careful, as most researchers will tell you all data doesn’t fit all situations or all subjects. Personally, I feel there are a lot of individuals who make very good emotional decisions at the time of their senior year and, later in life, they make very good rational decisions as well. And they’d probably be hard-pressed to tell you at what age they felt their decision-making transition occurred!

Similarly, I feel there are individuals who continue throughout life making emotional decisions for better or for worse. As the ODA’s researchers discovered with the emotional decision-making of teens, gaining peer acceptance and immediate rewards and gratification outweighed the value that adults place on delaying rewards for a long-term nonsocial goal, such as financial stability. Many times, I have had seniors of both genders tell me their college choice was based on where their boyfriend, girlfriend, or social friends were going. Which school had the best social setting (rather than strength of education or potential for job placement) has also been discussed numerous times by my patients.

Once we, as rational adults and parents, better-understand the decision-making process our students and those children around us are using to make choices, I feel the better coaching and parenting we can do to help them not make costly decisions.

If we move away from the college-centered discussion and just ask the senior what he or she would like to do with their life, interesting occupations from the purely emotional brain arise. Designing Lego cities for shopping malls or designing video game take-offs from Call-of-Duty have come from my patients of late; and, my rational thought to that (usually to myself), “Can you get a W-2 from that?” The suggestion of becoming a plumber, electrician, fireman, or police officer, which the world truly needs more of, has fallen on unexciting times of late. But if the pay scales of unions, benefits, time off, and retirement were rationally looked at, these jobs that America was founded on and that made America great can be very rewarding and, thanks to vocational schools, will hopefully see a resurgence.

“So where is all this leading Dr. Pfister? And how does this help me and my high school senior sitting across the dinner table who has just made the announcement, ‘I’m going to Any State U, at a bazillion bucks a year, to study nuclear physics and become an astronaut because I loved watching Apollo 13!’”

Does he not remember he scored in the 5th percentile in math on the ACT?! I spared my readers a very long read (like last week), and I broke this topic into two parts (Part 2 coming on the next #fridaypfisterfix). It was very intriguing to me to see the amount of clean, peer-reviewed, good-and-true-stuff-with-no-financial-corruption-involved research that has been done on how the adolescent brain works. This has been my core population served by my practice for the past 30 some years. We have had to listen to our consultants say that “they won’t wear headgear and sometimes no rubber bands, so now what are you going to do?” Yelling does not work! You would be surprised, no shocked, at how many times a week a parent, usually dad, drags the patient in and says, “Yell at him or her Dr. P.! They are not cooperating with X, Y or Z.” The parent then is surprised (and most times pleased) that we just chat about various outcomes and what is in it for the adolescent. This has proven, for myself and my staff, to be much more successful than other attempts at punishment.

With that being said, I wanted my readers to get a thumbnail sketch on how adolescents think. Maybe it will spur some of you to delve deeper into this fascinating subject. With a better understanding of your child’s brain, you will reap benefits of your research at the first family argument.

The second part of this blog has to do with looking at the ten factors, or areas, that successful people excel in when making decisions. Taking stock of your strengths and weaknesses can truly help the rational or emotional thinker be more successful in life today and, more importantly, tomorrow!

In the meantime, cheers to your brain (no matter which part you might be using),

Dr. Pfister

P.S. Fitness Alert! Are you getting ready for the Race With Grace 5K run and walk to support families that are fighting cancer? Come join myself, my wife, and staff as we participate… and hydrate… our amazing participants…Sunday September 18, 2022. We’ll be manning the hydration station. Register for the race by Sept. 7th here.