Does your mom still give you a hard time about what a crazy-emotional teen you were? The next time she gets snarky, tell her to consider recent research that shows that teens simply don't have the ability to process criticism from their moms.
For the research, more than 30 healthy preteens and teens lay in scanners listening to their mothers give 30-second-long critical, praising, and neutral statements. An example of a criticism by one mom? "One thing that bothers me about you is that you get upset over minor issues. I could tell you to take your shoes from downstairs. You’ll get mad that you have to pick them up and actually walk upstairs and put them in your room.”
Researchers recorded, through the scans, how much brain activity each teen exhibited as he or she listened to his or her mom nag, praise, or talk about something meaningless, such as grocery shopping. When the teens heard their mothers' criticism, they overwhelmingly showed increased activity in the areas of their brains that control emotion and behavior but decreased activity in the parts that affect their ability to process and understand information and control their emotions. In other words, the portions of the teens' brains that control their ability to understand someone else's perspective shut down when their moms began to rant about their shortcomings.
If your mom uses holiday dinners with the family as an excuse to take an embarrassing trip down memory lane, share the results of this study with her—it's a great way to steer the conversation away from tales of how she "told you so" about the grungy boyfriend you had when you were 16.
More from Women's Health:
12 Ways Motherhood Makes You Realize You Know Nothing About Anything
How NOT to Inherit Your Weight and Eating Habits from Your Parents
The Best Ages to Move in Together, Get Married, and Have Babies
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