Adolescent brains....

There's an interesting article over on Huffington Post today about adolescent brains and how they form ideas. The article states that so much emphasis has been placed on providing rich, stimulating environments for youngsters as their brain develops, that people have forgotten that the brain still develops as people get older.

Specifically, the adolescent brain is still developing the major pathways for making decisions. So how we, as parents, deal with their good - and bad - decisions will help them develop those pathways.

I wish there was a little more substance to the article: A little more research on how best to support these developing brains. Everyone seems to agree how to support younger brain development - but the older brain development doesn't get as many recommendations. I wonder if this is because people are scared of making others mad?

After all, if science came out and said something like, "When adolescent brains are developing, they need clear divisions between good and bad," - can you imagine the firestorm that would stir up? I certainly can.

It's funny that any number of political science and humanities studies have shown that the best indicator of how people behave and what beliefs they hold is......what their parents hold and how their parents behave. Is it possible that by surrounding adolescents with people who behave in "good" ways will make them good? The answer seems to be yes.

And if that's the case - then why would we surround our children with questionable things? Twerking and superstars who can't follow the rules of decency (like don't do drugs, don't spit on people, don't call people names) are not the people we want around our children. We want our children - especially our adolescents - around people who value themselves, who use their brains intelligently, and who behave with grace and friendliness.

If we, as adults, think we get influenced by our friends and surroundings - imagine how much more adolescents and children are influenced by theirs.

We have a role to play as parents - we must control what our children have access to. I'm not advocating full on censorship. But I'm advocating limiting access. We wouldn't let our children watch porn - so why let them read it in a book? We wouldn't want our children standing by while someone hurts another person - so why teach our children to do that with uber-violent video games? These are all things that we, as parents, can control.

But most of all, we can control what we tell and show our children through ourselves and the friends we have around.

If adolescent brains are still developing, just like toddler brains, then we need to be more careful, not less, with what we expose our children to.