tl;dr, Vol. 3: Helping Settle the Glitter

At first, the clinical psychologist looked askance at the school counsellor’s seemingly childish prop.  But then she thought again…

Sitting right there was an elegant model of the neurology of the distressed teenager. Early in adolescence, the brain gets remodeled to become more powerful and efficient, with this upgrade retracing the order of the original in utero development. The primitive regions, which are just above the back of the neck and house the emotion centers, are upgraded first — starting as early as age 10. The more sophisticated regions, located behind the forehead and giving us our ability to reason and maintain perspective, are redone last and may not reach full maturity until age 25.

While this process is underway, young people are put in a rather delicate position. Though they tend to be highly rational when calm, if they become upset, their new, high-octane emotional structures can overpower their yet-to-be upgraded reasoning capacities, crashing the entire system until it has a chance to reset.

And what’s that elegant model?  A glitter jar.   This metaphor show us that when all of the glitter is swirling around, we can’t accomplish anything. We have to let the glitter settle before we can pinpoint the problem. 

At ADRABA, we understand the need for the glitter jar, and so, in addition to the master teacher and onsite educator to support learning, we also have madrikhim to help settle the glitter.