Last month's column focused on important developmental events that transform a child's dependent brain into an adolescent brain that will inevitably reach for adult autonomy. To simplify a complex process, the interim Tween Brain is sufficiently mature to understand the basic dynamics of many of the challenges it confronts. But while it formerly looked to adults for appropriate resolutions to such challenges, it now begins to develop its own resolutions—and it pressures adults to implement them. This shift poses important challenges to parents and educators.

An infant is a toddler, relative to walking—and a tween is a fumbler, relative to problem solving. No offense meant to either. Walking inefficiently is OK when you're one and resolving challenges inefficiently is OK when you're eleven. The stakes do get higher however. Childhood behavioral error typically causes minimal damage. Adolescent behavioral error can result in serious injury or pregnancy.

Tween, the common term for this developmental period, omits the first two letters of between, and yet the verb to be is central to what's occurring within our brain between late childhood and early adolescence. Our brain is shifting its focus from a receptive to a responsive cognitive mode, from the mastery and use of existing adult responses to the creative exploration of its own identity, explanations, and responses.

Tweens thus have a current being integrity that parents and educators should recognize and respect. Let tweens be who they are. They are neither really smart children nor incompetent adolescents. They're just trying their best to enhance the maturation and integration of some very complex cognitive systems that can only mature through experience.