Many adolescents clash with their parents for being lazy and sluggish.
If houses could speak, they could tell endless stories of adolescents clashing with their parents for being lazy and sluggish.
All of a sudden, a child who used to be awake and sharp by 6am starts loving his or her sleep a little too much, to the chagrin of their parents.
In a book that seeks to calm parents down, renowned psychiatrist Frank Njenga urges society to bear with adolescents, explaining that it is nature taking its course.
In his autobiography City Boy: Chronicles of a Nairobi Life, Dr Njenga – whose first chapter is on his days as an adolescent in Nairobi – states that the biological clock tends to shift during puberty.
Giving an example of a girl who is still asleep at 8am, drawing her mother’s ire, Dr Njenga writes: “The adolescent’s biological clock has shifted, making it difficult to sleep early and fully wake up before 10am, often attracting the label ‘lazy’ from adults.”
He also relays the story of his sister, Vicky, struggling to wake up in the morning to go to school, which angered their father.
Many adolescents clash with their parents for being lazy and sluggish.
“Unknown to my father at the time, my sister was not a lazy girl. Instead, she was responding to the sleep needs of an adolescent. Having adjusted to the sleep/wake rhythm in adolescence, she went to bed two hours later than my parents at night and woke up three hours later than they did in the morning. Adolescents need to sleep for eight to 10 hours, a longer sleep duration than in late childhood. This paradox has upset and confused parents and adolescents, each accusing the other of failing to understand the sleep needs of this phase of life,” he writes.
“In recognition of this reality, some experts have advocated for a later start and ending of the school day in high school,” adds the psychiatrist. “Practices in high school where students are forced to make do with five or six hours of sleep are not informed by this modern reality and might, in some cases, have negative social and academic consequences.”
Ms Damaris Too, a Nairobi-based mother, is raising teenagers. She told Nation Lifestyle that she was never prepared for her daughter’s puberty.
Consultant Psychiatrist and Chairman of Chiromo Hospital Group Dr Frank Njenga, during an interview at his office along Muthangari Road, Lavington on 9, 2025.
“In the early stages, there was a lot of disobedience. There was a lot of the child just feeling she’s now grown up and can now tell me what she wants,” she said when asked whether she struggled with her daughter in the adolescence phase.
Dr Njenga, the founder and chairman of the Chiromo Hospital Group, explains what happens in an adolescent’s brain that makes them tend to make irrational decisions and be disobedient.
With the backing of imaging technology, he writes, scientists have proven that there is increased activity in parts responsible for the development of the self.
“Finally, we can confirm that heightened self-consciousness and susceptibility to peer influence originate in actual brain activity and are not mere social aberrations of youth. The need to belong has a biological origin,” he writes.
As to why adolescents tend to make “crazy” decisions, Dr Njenga explains that the part of the brain responsible for thrill-seeking behaviour develops faster than the part that is the “voice of reason.”
Drawing from his own experience with adolescence, he writes: “Years later, during my training and more so in the last few decades, I have better grasped what went on inside my changing brain.”
“Compared to adults, the adolescent’s brain is active in releasing the pleasure hormone, dopamine. This happens in the deep parts of the brain in an area associated with the brain’s reward centre. It is also the area of most significant activity in creating the pleasurable experiences associated with smoking (both cannabis and tobacco), alcohol, more potent recreational substances, and sex, all common challenges in this stage of life,” explains Dr Njenga.
He goes on: “The brain does not grow in complexity uniformly. The frontal part of the brain evolves much slower and much later than the pleasure-seeking parts, explaining why many adolescents seem to lack a ‘braking’ mechanism. This mismatch between the growth rates of the pleasure centres of the brain and the rational thinking frontal part of the brain is primarily responsible for the many problems associated with adolescence. It also finds expression in the altered capacity for consistently constructive decision-making as adolescents struggle to contain pleasure-seeking impulses.”
Ms Too said she had to borrow her mother’s rulebook, which is using prayer and going to church to impart the word of God on her children.
“Many times, I have had to kneel before my daughter’s bed,” she said.
In Dr Njenga’s school of thought, corporal punishment is not advisable for adolescents.
Adolescents need to sleep for eight to 10 hours, a longer sleep duration than in late childhood.
“The evidence showing the risks associated with physical punishment is robust,” he writes. “There is broad agreement among experts that caning children is an ineffective method of discipline and might, in some instances, have the opposite effect by increasing aggressive behaviour.”
However, for Ms Too, punishing her children is still informed by the old ways, where it takes a village to raise a child — and where the good old spanking is one of the methods.
“I have made sure that they know that we are living in a generation where the neighbour might beat her, and I will not be sorry about it. And that’s the same way: if she makes a mistake in the mall, any parent is allowed to discipline my child, because I believe a child is just not born and brought up by the parents,“ she said.
Another aspect that frustrates parents about teens is when their grades drop. Dr Njenga advises that people should assess any mental health issues when that happens.
“…Accept that an ‘A’ student is always an ‘A’ student until ‘something goes wrong’. Mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and drug use are common reasons for a decline in class performance. When a good student shows a decrease in performance, and long before any punitive measures are considered, the mental health status must receive due consideration,” writes Dr Njenga.
In an interview with Nation Lifestyle, Dr Njenga said that by the age of 14, anybody who will develop a mental health need will have started showing signs.
“By the age of 24, seventy-five percent of the people who will develop mental health conditions will have developed them. If we are going to be effective as a community, as a society, as a nation in preventing mental health conditions, it is among the adolescents that we need to concentrate, and even earlier. And that is why teachers are at the centre of everything,” he said.
In Dr Njenga’s categorisation, borrowing from global trends, some theorists consider the end of adolescence to be at the age of 25, not 16 as earlier thought. This tends to create problems, he argues, because parents in some instances label them as children while in other instances they consider them adults.
Ms Too advised fellow adolescent parents to root themselves in prayer and to lead by example.
“Be a friend to your [child]. Let your child know that they can rely on you. And be an example. Don’t tell your child not to take alcohol yet you come home at 3am, staggering,” she said.
We will wind this up by relaying a paragraph in Dr Njenga’s book where an adolescent is described as a powerful engine fitted into the body of a small car.
“In such circumstances, all safety considerations are inadequate to stop the adolescent from falling off the metaphorical cliff. The engine is too powerful for the brakes; it has been argued. A dangerous life is expected to result from this mismatch in differential brain development,” he writes.
