In fourth grade, I had a friend named John who meandered through the hallways of our school with an aid always following him. He was lanky, a little awkward, and had a mushroom cut to tame his dirty blonde hair. I first met John because he joined my class one day a week and sat next to me. Over time, I talked to him and noticed that he would ask me the same question multiple times in a conversation: “Do you like soup? What’s your favorite kind of soup? I like chicken noodle.” Even when we were talking about something completely different, he would sometimes interrupt our conversations to ask about my feelings toward soup. Sometimes he wouldn’t look at me when either one of us talked—he would
Puberty: the bane of parents’ lives. Just when they think they have this whole parenting business down, adolescence rears its ugly head. Hormones rule the world of puberty, changing a person from an innocent little child into a full-grown teen making their way through the perils of adulthood. While they get a bad reputation for their adverse effects on emotions, hormones help humans and animals alike mature. It is known that hormones are necessary to produce key changes in physical development during puberty. Yet, the question of how behavior matures is not well understood. We all know that rambunctious teenager does not act the same as the innocent child he or she was before puberty hit, b