Why You Need To Know This About Your Child's Brain

Recent metro area news saddened and impacted a local school district when a 15-year-old boy allegedly accidentally shot his 14-year-old girlfriend and then ran off and shot himself. The girl survived. The boy is dead. Every school in the district followed up with gun safety lessons for each age group. It might prevent future horrors - and I hope it does. But it cannot change this tragedy.

A quick visit to his social media page shows a buffet of photos where the boy was either posing with a gun or acting as if he was holding a gun. Those pictures go back more than a year. He loved guns, and he apparently had relatively easy access to them.

Let's use Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development, but in everyday language. If you have taken any psych class you have run into the four stages that get us from birth to mid-teens. The stages move from touching and sensing to doing and thinking. The kiddos are "doing" (concrete thinkers) from about 7 to 12 and then "thinking" (abstract thinking) from 12 on up. These stages do not follow chronological development, so a 13-year-old could easily be stuck as more of a concrete thinker. That's how old the boy was in the earlier photos. He was holding a gun, looking cool with no thought of the potential damage it could cause. Click - he was just looking cool at that moment.

If you add drugs or trauma into the mix, a child could feasibily be stuck at the development stage he was at while the chronological age marches on. I know someone now 55 who began doing drugs at age 13. Guess what his social media posts read like? Yep. An early teen still anxious to party on Friday and a fixation on demeaning photos of female anatomy.

The human brain does not even stop growing until the late 20's or early 30's. When you think about that, doesn't it make you wonder why we culturally normalize an 18-year-old-going off to war or a 21-year-old getting married? They have another decade of maturing to do yet we allow them to take on tremendous responsibility. I was a beginner adult when I married the first time at age 21. But in title only. I wasn't a woman and I wasn't mature. The next ten years of brain development and life experience put the icing on the cake of who I am today.

One of my teen clients recently had a baby. She's 15. Part of her is a teen wanting to use her cell phone and gossip. The other part of her pushed a baby out and talks about her weight loss. Technically she is a mother. She gave birth. The statistics and her trajectory indicate that sadly, she will not give life to this little baby. Both she and her mother ignored my suggestion to have the baby adopted in to a two-parent family that was craving children.

Many of my parent clients complain about their children "not listening" or "arguing" with them. Upon further dialog, I learn that the parent has expected adult thinking in the body of a 10-year-old. Time and time again, I remind them that their brains are not even capable of drawing the conclusiion the parent intended. They are literal and concrete. We need to cut them some slack while helping them learn to think on their own. Do you really want your college student calling you to ask how to do the laundry or how to load their backpack?

Even though our kids are concrete thinkers, it doesn't mean we can't coach them in drawing their own conclusions. Rather than tell kids what to do about something, ask them what they think should happen. Get them to process what is going on and to arrive at the answer without you spelling it out for them.

Examples:
1. It's cold outside and you are all going out. Instead of saying "Go get your coat" and not giving them the reasoning,  say "It's cold outside. We'll need coats." The older they get, you can merely state "It's cold" and they can determine if they prefer to be cold or warm.

2. Your kid is working on a presentation. Instead of telling them to say this and that, then more of that. Explain what an introduction is. Teach them how to identify main points. Show them how to wrap it up in a conclusion. You can just call it the begining, the middle and the end. Coach them in identifying what pieces of information should go where. Now you have not only helped them with one project, you have equiping them for the next ones.

3. You are showing your kid how to cook. At least you thought you were. Instead of telling them to pour the sugar into this measuring cup, teach them how to read the recipe and find the corresponding measruing cup from the set. Model the correct way to hold the spatula by showing how much more control there is when we hold it at a certain angle.

Less  talking, more doing.

Concrete thinkers will follow instructions just fine, but don't we want them to make good decisions  their own? It starts with the way we talk to our kids and what we expect from them. Just because you showed them once doesn't ensure they will do it that way again. They are learning how to think. Instead of saying "I told you that already!!" give them a cue.

You can't role-play enough safety scenarios as far as I'm concerned. They have to pre-think a plan so that they get out alive and know just what to do in case they are faced with a friend's bad decision. The day a friend shows them a gun to play with is not the day for them to wonder what to do.

Now It's a Pencil?

When I was in grade school, at recess boys and girls used to regularly gather around children from a less fortunate family and taunt and chase them. The teachers assigned to the yard duty consistently ignored the chanting group of children circling around four other kids. The humiliated kids used to pretend to go along, but you could see the pain in their faces. Sometimes I would go stand with them so more people would be on their side, but I didn't yet know how to tell others. Since the adults on the playground weren't interested, the unspoken lesson to me was that sometimes kids had to handle things on their own and that some things we just didn't talk about. The entire school just looked the other way.

Fast forward. Today we call this bullying and so much attention is given to the slightest infraction that stories repeatedly hit cable news. Seminars are given and Lifetime movies are made all telling us how bad it is to bully anyone for who they are. The kids in my school were merely poor. Imagine the movie that could have been made if they were of another ethnicity or gay?

Our North American school culture is on red alert lest someone be offended in any manner. We must protect everyone from everything every minute. And if we can't prevent it, we'd better jump all over it once it dares to happen!

A few years ago we heard about the "sexual harassment" when a kindergartener innocently kissed a little girl on the cheek.  Christmas Break is now retitled to cover up that reality. Entire states embrace curriculum embracing any kind of sexuality and any number of mommies and daddies.  Words the founding fathers used and commandments they posted as a matter of course are now deemed offensive and are being systematically removed from public buildings everywhere. Even the American flag - our country's flag - bothers some citizens! Oh, don't forget that it isn't fair to speak only English. (These same people don't blink when they go to France and everyone there speaks...French.)

Now we have a second grade boy playing "Marine and bad guy"  with his buddy at recess. His buddy was the bad guy and he was the Marine, cuz that's what his dad was. He used his pencil to fire "boom" and get the bad guy. The result for this natural child play was a two-day suspension for each boy. Never mind that they stopped immediately when their teacher told them to. Guns make children afraid and other children might be offended. They should never have done this.

Since this made the national news I imagine different legal groups or even the ACLU are getting involved. All over something normal children would do. Initially I wasn't going to give my girl so much as a squirt gun, but when she made them out of sticks and Legos, I realized it was part of play that I couldn't stop.

Kids play "good" and "bad" guy, and I'm thankful they can even think in terms of good and evil with all of the political correctness watering down reality every time I turn around. Gotta go. I'm off to buy a case of pencils and donate it to the local elementary school.

The Buzz About the Shot Up Laptop

If you are a YouTube fan, you might have already seen the viral video with frustrated father Tommy in his cowboy hat ranting about his ungrateful 15-year old daughter. He ends up dumping 8 hollow point bullets into her laptop to prove his point.

Dr. Laura replayed the audio of his video the other day, then read only the supportive comments. Our Youth Pastor sent out the link plus Tommy's own follow up prior to that. I read parent comments on Tommy's video and commented on the parent page at our church. I LOVE that a dad taking a stand is generating so much buzz! We need more dads who do this - forget about the cigarette or the gun or even the anger. Go dads who stand up!

I sent Tommy a comment (that I doubt he will get to read because he now has so much to peruse online) that I respected him taking a stand, but thought there could be a better way... the reality discipline way. After watching his video, I felt sure that after shooting up his girl's laptop, he would remind her day after day that she used to have a laptop, and had she not been so ungrateful, she still would have one and now she will just have to wait til age 18 to buy her own.

Hey, I am all for kids experiencing the consequence of their behavior and having to endure the waiting period to repurchase a "lost item" or privilege, but I vote NO on reminding them about their losses. Zipping parental lips is the hardest thing to do, and I ought to know, I use 39,000 words/day!

The reality discipline way to do things is to do them, but do them as if you are on valium. The key words are as if.I told Tommy that I might have shot up the laptop (or wanted to), but not let my kid see that part. Surely I agree that it is gone. I would just tell them it was gone because of __________, period. When they have a job and can buy a new one, great.

There is nothing like that agreeable shrug. "Yeah, I would wish I still had a laptop, too." Compare that with, "See?! Now you don't have that laptop anymore!! See?! See???"

Which response would impact a teen for the better?

What is the goal of removing the laptop, anyway? If it is to teach a lesson, then I say remove it by selling it and letting someone else gain the benefit of the new software. The kid can still experience the loss and won't see a dad out on a limb... A limb any parent can certainly understand.

The more I look at and experience parenting scenarios (aka opportunities) the more I believe it is about the less we say.

Remember that adage? Actions speak louder than words. Hey fellow parents, let's let 'em!