Curriculum

Can your child explain, in basic terms, why teenagers tend to feel emotions more intensely than adults — what's happening in the developing brain that makes feelings so powerful during adolescence, and what's the difference between managing a feeling and suppressing it?

Understand how the amygdala triggers emotional responses and how the prefrontal cortex (still developing in adolescence) regulates them; explain why stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline) affect thinking and memory; understand that the adolescent brain's dopamine system makes feelings more intense; distinguish between emotion regulation (managing feelings effectively) and emotion suppression (pushing feelings down, which is counterproductive); introduce cognitive reappraisal as a research-backed technique for changing how we interpret a situation