If your kids are like most teens, they sometimes struggle with organization, making the best choices, sustaining motivation, planning and achieving goals, impulse control, and emotional self-management. Frequently, the underlying problem is based on the still-developing strength of their attention-control systems.

Even in normal teens’ healthy brains, the expanded demands on their not-yet-fully-developed brain networks present challenges. When that happens, teens might struggle with falling behind in school, disorganization, forgetfulness, frequent mood swings, procrastination, high-risk behaviors, and inadequate skills in judgment, planning, and goal achievement.

Teen brains are profoundly different from the brains of either children or adults. Most significant of these differences is that the prefrontal cortex, where attention and focus networks are still developing, remains immature. This is the last part of the brain to fully wire into its adult level of efficiency. Notably, though, while not pathological,........

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