Urban Outfitters' Drinking T-Shirts for Teens - What Were They Thinking?

Have you ever bought anything from Urban Outfitters? I checked their website and they seem to have quite a diverse array of stylish clothing for young people. Young people with money, that is. The company seems to have a handle on what this market segment likes.

But take a look at these back-to-school fashions for young women:

Maybe since most teenagers are still searching for their identity, preferably a cool one, perhaps the marketing geniuses at Urban Outfitters figured that a lot of young women would want to send the message that they're heavy into really cool adult behavior, like drinking alcohol. And maybe they assumed that since teens aren't famous for good judgment, the kids wouldn't connect the dots about alcohol being illegal, addictive, and potentially dangerous.

The gentle folks at Urban Outfitters know that drinking booze doesn't make you cool or adult-like, it just makes you drunk. But they're probably betting that most kids haven't yet learned this perspective.

But their parents have. The Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) were outraged that clothing that glorifies drinking was being marketed to under-aged kids. The Huffington Post concluded its article with a poll about the t-shirts. 46% indicated "Inappropriate." 54% indicated "No big deal."

This is the culture we live in. People haven't got the word that teen brains are still developing, just as the brains of unborn children are still developing, and alcohol and drugs can derail normal development. The area under development in the teen brain is the area at makes them smart. Disturb that area during adolescence and the kid could end up stupid - for life. Seriously.

I'm assuming that the executives at Urban Outfitters weren't thinking about consequences like this when they decided it would be good business to sell t-shirts that glorify drinking alcohol to teens. They were just thinking about making some easy bucks off their innocence and gullibility.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2012. Building Personal Strength .

Permanent Brain Damage Caused By Teen Alcohol and Drug Use

Most mothers already know that during pregnancy a fertilized egg develops step by step until the baby is ready to come into the world. This is the most complex and sensitive period of a child's growth. If alcohol or drugs are passed from a mother's bloodstream into the womb in the wrong quantity or at the wrong time, the development of the unborn child can be disrupted. The consequence is often a newborn baby with physical problems, including abnormalities in the brain.

According to a front-page report from the November 13, 2011, San Antonio Express-News, the Children's Research Triangle has conducted screening at more than 100 sites nationwide this past year. Dr. Ira J. Chasnoff, a pediatrician there, concluded, "Drinking alcohol can be devastating to the developing fetus. It causes structural and functional changes in the brain. In San Antonio alone, nearly 100 of the 400 women screened were using a substance that harms the developing brain."

Nationwide, every year nearly 40,000 babies are born with disorders related to use of alcohol during pregnancy. The most serious disorder is "fetal alcohol syndrome" (FAS), the leading cause of mental retardation in the U.S. FAS also causes malformed facial features. In addition, three times as many children again are affected by "alcohol-related neurodevelopmental disorder," which is a serious form of brain damage marked by behavior and learning disabilities. These children are often misdiagnosed as having ADD.

This is why most doctors caution a mother to avoid using these substances during pregnancy. The consequences can be permanent, even tragic for the child and the family. The afflicted child will never be completely normal.

After birth, a child's brain goes through many more phases of development as the child's brain gains perceptual abilities, then physical abilities, then language abilities, and beyond. Once removed from the womb and weaned from the breast, a child is relatively safe from a mother substance abuse.

But what parents don’t know is that the danger of brain damage surfaces again when a child reaches puberty.

There are the well-known dangers of adolescent drinking. Thousands of young people are killed every year in alcohol-related incidents. Some escape death, but "get in trouble." Traffic accidents and teen pregnancy, for example. Many more become alcoholics.

As tragic as these consequences are, there is one more that is just as awful - or even worse - and most parents don’t know about it. Teenagers who drink too much at this time of life can cause permanent brain damage. I'm not talking about the old scare that drinking alcohol will kill off a few hundred brain cells. No, it's much worse than that. Just like the brain development that happens in the fetus, a sensitive period of brain growth is underway during adolescence, and alcohol entering the brain can dramatically disrupt the growth process. The result could be a permanent degradation of brain function of the prefrontal lobes - the area that coordinates higher-level thinking.

During the past decade scientists have discovered that a young person's brain is still changing and developing throughout adolescence. Significantly, the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in analysis, reasoning, foreseeing consequences, problem solving, conceptual thinking, planning and self-management, is "under construction" throughout adolescence. Essentially, the foundation for intellectual thought is being wired during this sensitive 12-year period.

The problem is that this is the same phase of growing up when many young people experiment with alcohol and drugs. All this partying, binge drinking and "sowing wild oats" used to be thought of as a harmless phase that teenagers ultimately outgrow.

Cruel comments such as, "Old Harold is a couple cards short of a full deck," are often directed at adults who "aren't very bright." We now know that the inability of an adult to use good judgment, control emotions, and connect the dots quickly could have been caused by drinking alcohol or using drugs during adolescence.

Young people who abuse substances during the ages from 12 to 24 risk diminished mental capacity as adults—the equivalent of permanent brain damage.

So laughing off the behavior as youthful sowing of wild oats is a shocking rationalization. Still, this is a hard topic for parents to discuss with their kids. Maybe this new information will help. Also, I’ve written these books to coach pre-teens and teens about these and other issues: Conversations with the Wise Aunt (for girls) and Conversations with the Wise Uncle (for boys). I’ve also written a guide for parents who want to stimulate growth of their child’s prefrontal cortex, How to Give Your Teen a Superior Mind, available as a free download at www.StrongForParenting.com.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Two Teen Journeys - One Tragic, One Triumphant

Most mornings I start the coffee, put fruit on my granola, and sit down to read the San Antonio Express-News. What I see are stories about people who had great mentoring and coaching during their teen journey, and those who didn't.

Today I happened to read a story (by Michelle Mondo and Hollie O'Connor) about Pierre T. Abernathy, 30, who was chased by police between 3 and 4 AM because he was driving on the wrong side of the road. The chase led the police to Pierre's mother's house. When the officers wanted him to get out of his car, Pierre struggled with them. Back-up arrived, and he injured three officers before he ran out of steam. Exhausted, he collapsed in the back seat of a cruiser, stopped breathing, and died.

Who was Pierre T. Abernathy? Not much is known. He lived with his mother and other family members. He had spent the night drinking and drove home drunk. According to court records, he had a history of resisting arrest, evading arrest, driving while intoxicated and drug possession.

According to his mother, he had a history of mental illness. Her perspective on the incident: "The police do what they want, when they want, how they want, and we don't have any voice. We just pay their paycheck."

Abernathy was a man who had no impulse control - few if any circuits in his prefrontal cortex to moderate his emotions and urges. These neural pathways need to be ingrained through repeated thought and action during adolescence, when the window for prefrontal cortex development opens, then closes. Some people get a lot of development during this period, lots of coaching to interpret, analyze, evaluate, understand, problem solve, decide, plan and manage. Others don't exercise this area much at all. On the surface, it seems that Abernathy did almost none of this kind of thinking and activity during his teen years. After the window for prefrontal cortex development closed, the consequences cascaded throughout his later life. In Abernathy's case, that life was turbulent, wasted and lasted only 30 years.

On the same page of today's paper was a contrasting story (by Karisa King) about 17-year-old Zhetique Gunn, who was raised by a single mother in publicly subsidized housing. Zhetique was the valedictorian of her class at Holmes High School. "Just because my family doesn't have certain things, that's not all that we are. We also have substance to us," she said.

She says she'll attend the University of Houston and pursue a career in engineering. She credits her success to her mother's emphasis on education. Even before her teachers began assigning homework, her mother required her to finish workbook lessons before she could go to the playground. Her mother told her she would have a career, not a job.

According to the story, she achieved her academic success despite, as a freshman, having to move from hotel to hotel and live out of boxes for months after their apartment grew infested with mold. "I learned that I can't control where I'm living. So I focused energy on my school."

People don't get to choose their parents, but parents have an enormous impact on a teenager's development - and future life as an adult.

The kind of adult coaching a young person gets - or fails to get - can have a huge impact. Here are two books that are incomparably rich in adult coaching...

Conversations with the Wise Aunt (for girls)

Conversations with the Wise Uncle (for boys)

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .

Why Young People Kill Themselves with Alcohol

Cover illustration, Parade - 6/12/11

According to Emily Listfield in her June 12, 2011, Parade magazine lead article, "The Underage Drinking Epidemic," every year more than 1,700 college students die from alcohol-related incidents. This is more deaths than the number of U.S. soldiers who have died in Afghanistan during the 9 years the U.S. military has been involved there.

Every year. Kids. In college. More than 5 times as many DEATHS per year from using alcohol to have a good time than troops in the combat zone dying from I.E.D.s, suicide bombs and gunfire.

The numbers sort of grab your attention. Listfield does a good job of putting reality in front of her Sunday readers. Picture two loving, concerned parents saving money for years so that their honor student daughter can get a great education and the best possible start in life. Then picture the child escaping from the pressures of freshman year and bonding with her friends by making history binge-drinking on Four Loko, a $3-a-can sweet beverage with the alcohol equivalent of five beers. Woo-hoo! Now picture the parents receiving a phone call from the college authorities....

A similar alcohol-related tragedy happens 1,700 times every year.  

The article does a great job of stating the problem, but it fails to explain why young people do this. These articles almost never do. Even Dr. Oz's new book, You: The Owner's Manual for Teens, fails to mention the main reason why teens do things that will endanger their lives.

I've explained this before, but in the context of the Parade article, I feel I need to do so again.

The real reason kids fail to use good judgment with alcohol is that the part of their brain that handles foresight and critical judgment - the prefontal cortex - is "under construction."

At the onset of adolescence, the final stage in human brain development begins. And it affects only one part of the brain - the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that handles what we know as "intellect" - understanding of cause and effect, judgment, planning, and self-control. This part of the brain, more than any other, is what distinguishes humans from all other species. It's the part of the brain that looks at a situation and says, "Uh-oh. This is really risky. Not worth it. No way am I going to do that."

As with every area of brain development, it starts with "blossoming," the rapid growth of many times more brain cell connections than an adult human will ever need. This over-growth makes use of the prefrontal cortex in decision-making difficult. Faced with a risky situation, an adolescent is likely to use the amygdala instead, a more primitive part of the brain that forces decisions based on emotion.

After this initial blossoming, each time a young person uses critical thinking, the brain cells involved will strengthen their connections. As brain scientists are fond of saying, "neurons that fire together wire together."

Eventually, the unused connections die off. This phase is called "pruning." By the time adolescence is over, at age 22 (plus or minus), only the connections that have been used repeatedly will remain. While learning is still possible throughout adult life, these remaining connections will form the foundation for future intellectual growth.

Do I need to say what happens to a young person who rarely uses critical judgment during adolescence? Like all phases of brain development, it's "use-it-or-lose-it."

It's also a "Catch-22" situation. For a teenager, using that part of the brain is a problem. They are discovering their independence, so they frequently put themselves in situations where they need to use critical judgment. But doing so is difficult for them. Remember? That part of the brain is under construction. That's why kids need constant adult guidance during adolescence.

More than 1,700 deaths.

And then there are the under-age binge drinkers who did not die. Well, I've got news for you. They may have dodged the death bullet, but they probably didn't dodge the others.

The impaired decision-making that leads to death can also lead to injury. The first bad decision is to hoot it up drinking with friends. The next bad decision is to get into cars. Use your imagination a little bit to visualize what happens to a teenager when the vehicle they're in leaves the highway and flips over several times before crashing to a stop. This actually happened not long ago on Loop 1604 outside of San Antonio. The driver, 18-year-old James Patterson, who was drinking at a pre-graduation party, was killed. His three passengers survived, with serious injuries. I read about these stories every week. Patterson was one of 366 teenage drivers killed in Texas that year.

As Listfield points out, under the influence of alcohol, teens are "much more likely to be taken advantage of sexually or to take advantage of someone else."

All this is shocking, but here's the worst part. The article cites Dr. Fulton Crews, director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine: "Adolescents showed much more frontal cortical damage than adults." If a child is exposed to alcohol or drugs during a sensitive period of brain development, it can damage that part of the brain. Teens binge drinking during the sensitive period of prefrontal cortex development are likely to retard development of that critical area.

Cause: excessive alcohol consumption. Effect: permanent brain damage in the area of the brain that handles intellect.

That's a sobering consequence. Most people don't think about this in connection with teen drinking, because they have no idea that this crucial aspect of brain development is even happening. Well, if you've read this far, you know now.

On page 12 of her article, Listfield lists some things parents can do. I like her recommendations. Translation: whatever you say or do, be guided by your unconditional love for the child. But above all, help them do the critical thinking. Coach them about cause and effect. Because I promise you, it is highly unlikely that they're capable of doing this for themselves.

To help you coach this - and many more huge issues for teens - I've written these books...

Conversations with the Wise Uncle - for boys

Conversations with the Wise Aunt - for girls

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2011. Building Personal Strength .