Road rage explained: how our brains develop and regulate our emotions

Managing emotions is one of the biggest challenges for both parents and children. To better understand why our kids sometimes ‘lose control’ our lead clinical psychologist at Oli help, Dr Emily Preheim DuPre, us on a journey inside the brain — from the amygdala, which sparks the most intense emotions, to the prefrontal cortex, which helps us calm and regulate them. In simple terms, Emily shows us why tantrums are not misbehaviour, but the natural outcome of how the brain develops.

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Brain development and impulse control

Human brains develop bottom to top and back to front, with executive functioning skills, including emotion regulation, being the slowest to develop. 

The last part of a person’s brain to develop is the area behind the forehead called the prefrontal cortex, responsible for what’s called executive functioning. This part is effectively the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of your brain and being (to which we will dedicate a full newsletter soon). The prefrontal cortex is responsible for processes like planning, cause and effect, short- and long-term sequencing of our behaviours, and regulating and managing our impulses. In large part, the prefrontal cortex is what separates us from other mammals on this planet. 

Not only does the prefrontal cortex take a long time to develop, but it also competes with another, more powerful and faster to develop part of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is in charge of expressing intense negative emotions such as anger, fear and frustration. Sometimes it’s called the caveman brain or the lizard brain, because it propels us to act in ways that are not sophisticated or reasonable. From an evolutionary perspective, the amygdala is there to keep us safe from mortal danger, but when it comes to parenting, it's the part of the brain that often gets kids into trouble and makes interacting with them so difficult sometimes.

In stressful situations, brain functioning can explain why even adults can act out of control

When the amygdala gets switched-on - activated in response to a stressful situation - the prefrontal cortex immediately gets switched-off. The amygdala and the prefrontal cortex do not co-function. Road rage in adults is the typical behaviour explained by this phenomenon. Losing the plot (often in front of our children) for being cut off in traffic, as if we had no control of our actions, happens because we precisely have no control of our actions at that moment! While there are very good and useful evolutionary reasons why this does happen, it’s often referred to as amygdala hijacking because, in the context of our modern lives, the amygdala often causes us more problems than it solves. 

The amygdala’s motto could be thought of as “act now, think later”. Indeed, even one minute later, when the nervous system has calmed down, which allows the prefrontal cortex to come back online, it’s not unusual to immediately feel regret, guilt and even shame at a momentary outburst. When the prefrontal cortex is switched on, rational thought helps us realise how unhelpful the outburst was and that now one has to deal with the consequences we didn’t (and indeed couldn’t) think of in the ‘amygdala hijack’ moment.

What does this have to do with our children and parenting?

Well, children experience the exact same phenomenon, only far more extreme, because they are dealing with a fully developed amygdala and a poorly developed prefrontal cortex. In difficult moments, parents must remember that for young children, impulse regulation is harder, sometimes nearly impossible without our help. If you think about it in this way, it stands to reason that children, even neurotypical children, have poor impulse control. The younger the child, the worse the impulse control. For neurodivergent kids, this gap is often even wider when compared to their peers. That’s where we, as their caregivers, have a role to play to teach them (over and over and over!) how to control their impulses when they’re angry, scared, frustrated or annoyed. Put differently, we can help them develop emotion regulation skills, which with time will allow them to respond differently to these intense negative emotions.

Why is this explanation important for parenting? 

It’s usually not the child’s fault when they act in such ‘out of control’ ways. It’s because their brain has not yet developed the capacity to manage these intense negative emotions in ways that are productive or socially acceptable. If we are able to remind ourselves of this neurodevelopmental fact when witnessing their outburst, it’s a first important step to helping us regulate our own emotions and reactions, so we can help them learn to regulate theirs. Now that we have explained ‘why’ all young children have poor impulse control, watch out for our practical advice on how to respond differently when you are witnessing your own child’s moment of dysregulation.