£50.00 £35.00
Going on In There?
What’s
UNDERSTANDING THE TEENAGE BRAIN
When puberty hits and our young people seem to change overnight, it can feel confusing and exhausting. What’s Going on In There? explains what is happening in the teenage brain, using clear, engaging language grounded in
neuroscience. Wellington-based educator and speaker Kathryn Berkett helps parents, caregivers, teachers and youth workers understand adolescence as a temporary and essential upgrade, not a breakdown. With warmth, empathy and humour, she unpacks the huge physical and chemical changes driving teenage behaviour, from shifts in dopamine and hormones to changes in facial recognition, risk-taking and social processing. Behaviours that seem moody, avoidant or reckless are reframed as natural responses to a brain under construction. When we understand that, everything changes.
What’s Going on In There?
The Neuroscience of the Adolescent Brain ,
By Kathryn Berkett
Published by Mary Egan Publishing
On sale 27 November 2025, RRP $35, ISBN 978-1-0670875-1-7
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Description
WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS
Adolescence is the most intense period of brain development since early childhood.
Yet despite the thousands of books written about parenting, very few explain why teenagers behave the way they do on a neurological level, or how to respond in ways that truly help.
What’s Going on In There? offers practical tools to help adults stay calm, stay connected and support the incredible development unfolding in front of them. The better we understand this
stage, the better the outcomes — for them, and for us.
MAKING COMPLEX SCIENCE EASY
Kathryn has a rare gift for translating neuroscience into practical insight. “I simplify the biology and the complicated concepts into information that people can actually use,” she says.
A mother of two, she writes with honesty and compassion, weaving scientific understanding with lived experience.
Pio Terei (MNZM) says,
“Having the information is one thing. Kathryn’s gift is making it land.”
J
athryn Berkett
Kathryn Berkett is a Wellington-based educator, speaker and neuroscience communicator who has spent more than twenty years studying how the brain develops and why we behave the way we do. She holds a Master’s in Educational Psychology, is completing a second in Applied Neuroscience through King’s College London, and is certified in the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. Through her company Engage Training, Kathryn has worked with parents, teachers, workplaces and communities across Aotearoa and abroad.
A mother of two grown children, she writes and speaks with humour, clarity and compassion, making complex science easy to understand and impossible to forget.