"Mother's Day Messages" - Dave Granlund, US
Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
Sunday, May 10, 2015
The woman who created Mother's Day died despising it
Now, here's a tragic but true story. A lot of these kinds of women; be it the mother's day inventor or the pink ribbon inventor for breast cancer, despised the commercialization of what they believed in so much.
Love for a mother can never be repaid through a few flowers & chocolates or cards. If this would've been true, then nursing homes wouldn't be filled with old moms crying that their kids put them there (many by coercion) & have forgotten them completely.
Last week or so, I put a blog post here how there are inheritance wars are going on in Canada & US. The article showed how kids (Baby Boomers) despise their parents to be still alive & not sharing their wealth with them. It's not the story of one or a few families, but many families. Those Baby Boomers also showered their moms with chocolates & flowers on Mother's Day, because that's easy to do. The harder part is taking care of an old, fragile, a shell of a woman. But that's tough to do, so let's ship mom off to nursing home & divide up the bounties of her wealth.
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If you think the spirit of Mother’s Day has been spoiled by the commercialism of cards, flowers & once-a-year sincerity, you stand united with the woman credited with giving us the annual event.
West Virginian Anna Jarvis was so horrified by the monster she helped create in 1914, she spent most of her later years campaigning to have the second Sunday in May removed from the calendar as the day to honour your mother.
In the end, Jarvis lost the fight. The woman, who was never a mother herself, exhausted her financial resources & ruined her mental health, dying alone in 1948 in an asylum at the age of 84.
“She simply wanted a day to honour & remember mothers, but in her mind it didn’t turn out that way,” says William Pollard, an archivist at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where Jarvis bequeathed her letters & other writings.
In 1914, Jarvis spearheaded a campaign to help persuade US president Woodrow Wilson to set aside May’s second Sunday as a national day for recognition. She orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to Wilson, lobbied influential politicians & clergymen & distributed brochures arguing about the importance of a national day for mothers.
Jarvis’ cause came from admiration for her recently deceased mother, Anna Maria & others like her, who had been an inspiration.
But by the early 1920s, she was sickened by the commercial circus she had helped create. She felt the day had nothing to do with celebrating the real achievements of women.
Jarvis spent her days crashing floral company conventions to protest & urging card companies to give the money they made from Mother’s Day to the poor. At one Mother’s Day convention where flowers were being sold she was arrested for disturbing the peace. She even launched a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s day festival from being held.
Her story didn’t end happily. Jarvis, who didn’t marry, died in 1948 alone & penniless in a hospital near Philadelphia from a illness brought on in part by her ceaseless campaign.
Just before her death Jarvis told a local reporter: “I devoted my entire life to Mother’s Day & the racketeers & grafters have taken it over.”
Love for a mother can never be repaid through a few flowers & chocolates or cards. If this would've been true, then nursing homes wouldn't be filled with old moms crying that their kids put them there (many by coercion) & have forgotten them completely.
Last week or so, I put a blog post here how there are inheritance wars are going on in Canada & US. The article showed how kids (Baby Boomers) despise their parents to be still alive & not sharing their wealth with them. It's not the story of one or a few families, but many families. Those Baby Boomers also showered their moms with chocolates & flowers on Mother's Day, because that's easy to do. The harder part is taking care of an old, fragile, a shell of a woman. But that's tough to do, so let's ship mom off to nursing home & divide up the bounties of her wealth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you think the spirit of Mother’s Day has been spoiled by the commercialism of cards, flowers & once-a-year sincerity, you stand united with the woman credited with giving us the annual event.
West Virginian Anna Jarvis was so horrified by the monster she helped create in 1914, she spent most of her later years campaigning to have the second Sunday in May removed from the calendar as the day to honour your mother.
In the end, Jarvis lost the fight. The woman, who was never a mother herself, exhausted her financial resources & ruined her mental health, dying alone in 1948 in an asylum at the age of 84.
“She simply wanted a day to honour & remember mothers, but in her mind it didn’t turn out that way,” says William Pollard, an archivist at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where Jarvis bequeathed her letters & other writings.
In 1914, Jarvis spearheaded a campaign to help persuade US president Woodrow Wilson to set aside May’s second Sunday as a national day for recognition. She orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to Wilson, lobbied influential politicians & clergymen & distributed brochures arguing about the importance of a national day for mothers.
Jarvis’ cause came from admiration for her recently deceased mother, Anna Maria & others like her, who had been an inspiration.
But by the early 1920s, she was sickened by the commercial circus she had helped create. She felt the day had nothing to do with celebrating the real achievements of women.
Jarvis spent her days crashing floral company conventions to protest & urging card companies to give the money they made from Mother’s Day to the poor. At one Mother’s Day convention where flowers were being sold she was arrested for disturbing the peace. She even launched a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s day festival from being held.
Her story didn’t end happily. Jarvis, who didn’t marry, died in 1948 alone & penniless in a hospital near Philadelphia from a illness brought on in part by her ceaseless campaign.
Just before her death Jarvis told a local reporter: “I devoted my entire life to Mother’s Day & the racketeers & grafters have taken it over.”
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Breastfeeding 'linked to higher IQ'
Breastfeeding an infant, a practice, which has been going on since humans came on this planet, through creation or evolution (regardless of what you believe), is still the best possible practice to get an infant the essential nutrients, in that early stage of life.
Regardless of how much the world develops & how much Nestle or other companies try to sell infant formula, they still cannot replace the value of nutrition an infant receives from breast milk.
Furthermore, the breast milk is an affordable (read: free) source of nutrition for the infant. Many babies around the world die because of malnutrition or water-borne diseases, because of these formulas. How?
Mothers, in rural areas of developing nations, are given free samples of Nestle's infant formula in the beginning (these companies want to hook these mothers for life on formulas). Since, clean water is scarce in those areas, mothers use dirty water, & essentially, kill their newborn with their own hands.
Also, since biologically, if the mother's breasts are not used by the infant in those early days after birth, they dry up. After those free samples are gone, mothers are required to buy the formula. Those women don't have enough finances to purchase those relatively expensive formulas. So, those babies suffer malnutrition in their early days of growth, which in turn, inhibit their growth, or may even kill them.
On top of that, Islam teaches people that breastfeeding creates a very strong bond of love between a mother & her baby. We can see nowadays that many career women, especially the ones who are very busy in their careers, don't opt for breastfeeding. Heck, they may not even go for the whole pregnancy drama & just hire a surrogate. What happens when those kids grow up? Mothers don't know what their kids are doing & how they are growing up etc. Kids return that non-existent love by also not caring about their mothers.
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The research in Brazil traced nearly 3,500 babies, from all walks of life, & found those who had been breastfed for longer went on to score higher on IQ tests as adults.
Experts say the results, while not conclusive, appear to back current advice that babies should be exclusively breastfed for 6 months.
But they say mothers should still have a choice about whether or not to do it.
Regarding the findings - published in The Lancet Global Health - they stress there are many different factors other than breastfeeding that could have an impact on intelligence, although the researchers did try to rule out the main confounders, such as mother's education, family income & birth weight.
Dr. Bernardo Lessa Horta, from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said his study offers a unique insight because in the population he studied, breastfeeding was evenly distributed across social class - not something just practised by the rich & educated.
Most of the babies, irrespective of social class, were breastfed - some for less than a month and others for more than a year.
Those who were breastfed for longer scored higher on measures of intelligence as adults.
They were also more likely to earn a higher wage & to have completed more schooling.
Dr. Horta believes breast milk may offer an advantage because it is a good source of long-chain saturated fatty acids which are essential for brain development.
Kevin Fenton, national director of health & wellbeing, Public Health England, said there was strong evidence that breastfeeding provides some health benefits for babies - reduced respiratory & gastrointestinal infections in infancy, for example.
He said: "PHE's advice remains that exclusive breastfeeding for around the first 6 months of life provides health benefits to babies.
"We recognise however, that not all mothers choose, or are able, to breastfeed & infant formula is the only alternative to breast milk for babies under 12 months old."
Dr Colin Michie, chairman of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health's nutrition committee, said: "There have been many studies on the link between breastfeeding & IQ over the years with many having had their validity challenged.
"This study however, looks at a number of other factors including education achievement & income at age 30 which, along with the high sample size, makes this study a very powerful one.
"It is important to note that breastfeeding is one of many factors that can contribute to a child's outcomes, however this study emphasises the need for continued & enhanced breastfeeding promotion so expectant mothers are aware of the benefits of breastfeeding."
Regardless of how much the world develops & how much Nestle or other companies try to sell infant formula, they still cannot replace the value of nutrition an infant receives from breast milk.
Furthermore, the breast milk is an affordable (read: free) source of nutrition for the infant. Many babies around the world die because of malnutrition or water-borne diseases, because of these formulas. How?
Mothers, in rural areas of developing nations, are given free samples of Nestle's infant formula in the beginning (these companies want to hook these mothers for life on formulas). Since, clean water is scarce in those areas, mothers use dirty water, & essentially, kill their newborn with their own hands.
Also, since biologically, if the mother's breasts are not used by the infant in those early days after birth, they dry up. After those free samples are gone, mothers are required to buy the formula. Those women don't have enough finances to purchase those relatively expensive formulas. So, those babies suffer malnutrition in their early days of growth, which in turn, inhibit their growth, or may even kill them.
On top of that, Islam teaches people that breastfeeding creates a very strong bond of love between a mother & her baby. We can see nowadays that many career women, especially the ones who are very busy in their careers, don't opt for breastfeeding. Heck, they may not even go for the whole pregnancy drama & just hire a surrogate. What happens when those kids grow up? Mothers don't know what their kids are doing & how they are growing up etc. Kids return that non-existent love by also not caring about their mothers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The research in Brazil traced nearly 3,500 babies, from all walks of life, & found those who had been breastfed for longer went on to score higher on IQ tests as adults.
Experts say the results, while not conclusive, appear to back current advice that babies should be exclusively breastfed for 6 months.
But they say mothers should still have a choice about whether or not to do it.
Regarding the findings - published in The Lancet Global Health - they stress there are many different factors other than breastfeeding that could have an impact on intelligence, although the researchers did try to rule out the main confounders, such as mother's education, family income & birth weight.
Dr. Bernardo Lessa Horta, from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil, said his study offers a unique insight because in the population he studied, breastfeeding was evenly distributed across social class - not something just practised by the rich & educated.
Most of the babies, irrespective of social class, were breastfed - some for less than a month and others for more than a year.
Those who were breastfed for longer scored higher on measures of intelligence as adults.
They were also more likely to earn a higher wage & to have completed more schooling.
Dr. Horta believes breast milk may offer an advantage because it is a good source of long-chain saturated fatty acids which are essential for brain development.
Kevin Fenton, national director of health & wellbeing, Public Health England, said there was strong evidence that breastfeeding provides some health benefits for babies - reduced respiratory & gastrointestinal infections in infancy, for example.
He said: "PHE's advice remains that exclusive breastfeeding for around the first 6 months of life provides health benefits to babies.
"We recognise however, that not all mothers choose, or are able, to breastfeed & infant formula is the only alternative to breast milk for babies under 12 months old."
Dr Colin Michie, chairman of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health's nutrition committee, said: "There have been many studies on the link between breastfeeding & IQ over the years with many having had their validity challenged.
"This study however, looks at a number of other factors including education achievement & income at age 30 which, along with the high sample size, makes this study a very powerful one.
"It is important to note that breastfeeding is one of many factors that can contribute to a child's outcomes, however this study emphasises the need for continued & enhanced breastfeeding promotion so expectant mothers are aware of the benefits of breastfeeding."
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Inside Your Teenager's Scary Brain
Teen years always the most troubling & scary part of our years. Although, this article is a good one, every parent has a different way & experience of bringing up their teen through those difficult years. Some pass with flying colours, while others crash & burn. Every parent has their own story & wisdom to pass on to other parents. What actually works is different for everyone. But then, it never hurts to learn from others, either, or at least keep these thoughts in the back of one's mind.
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Conventional wisdom has long held that our brains are largely developed by puberty. However, research in the past 10-15 years has shown that our brains continue to develop in fundamental ways through the teen years & even into the late 20s & 30s. In fact, Jensen argues in her new book, The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents & Young Adults, the teenage years comprise one of the brain’s most critical periods for development—likely every bit as crucial as early childhood. “That 7 years in their life is, in a way, as important as their first 7 years of life,” Jensen says. “It is probably one of the most important 7-year [periods] in their entire life.”
Among the most popular misconceptions about brain development is the idea that the most important changes happen in the first 3 years of life. This “myth of three,” has been the source of intense parental anxiety over the fear that “adults are in a race against time to provide stimulation to their infants before their synapses are lost,” writes Paul Howard-Jones, a professor of neuroscience & education at the University of Bristol in the journal Nature. ... Behind the seemingly invincible teenage boy with the booming voice & adult body is a brain that is still incredibly vulnerable to everything from sports-related concussions to mental illness & addiction. New research is uncovering ways in which the activities that so often typify teenage years, such as experimenting with cigarettes & marijuana & alcohol, can lower a teen’s IQ or increase susceptibility to mental illness later on. Chronic stress stemming from family violence, poverty or bullying has also been linked to changes in the teen brain that can raise the risk of mood disorders or learning disabilities.
At the heart of our understanding of brain development are 2 basic concepts: grey matter & white matter. Grey matter consists of neurons, the brain cells that form the building blocks of the brain. White matter, axons, are the connections that form between grey matter, helping to move information from one area of the brain to the next.
While grey-matter growth is indeed almost completely finished by the age of 6, white matter—the wiring between brain cells—continues to develop well into the 20s. In fact, says Jensen, that wiring is only about 80% complete by the age of 18.
Along with new wiring, the brains of teens & young adults are also undergoing a process called myelination, in which those white-matter connections are being coated in a protective fatty material. Myelin acts as a form of insulation, allowing signals to move faster between brain cells, helping to speed the flow of information in the brain. Since both the wiring to the prefrontal cortex, & the insulation, is incomplete, teens often take longer to access their prefrontal cortexes, meaning they have a harder time making accurate judgments & controlling their impulses. The process of myelination continues into the 30s, giving rise to questions about how old someone must be to be considered to have a fully developed “adult” brain.
At the same time that teens’ brains are laying down connections & insulation, puberty has triggered pituitary glands to release hormones that are acting on the limbic system, the brain’s emotional centre. The combination of heightened emotions & an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex explains why teens are often prone to emotional outbursts, says Jensen, & also why they seek out more emotionally charged situations, from sad movies to dangerous driving.
Hormones also appear to have a different effect in teens than they do in adults. The hormone THP, which is released by the body in response to stress, has a calming effect in adults, but actually seems to have the opposite effect in teens, increasing stress. It’s one reason why teens are prone to anxiety & post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s also a good reason, Jensen says, why parents & schools should be sensitive to the problem of bullying.
Along with new wiring, insulation & hormones, teen brains are highly sensitive to the release of dopamine, which plays on the areas of the brain that govern pleasure & helps explain why teens seem to take so many risks.
It’s not that they don’t know any better. In fact, reasoning abilities are largely developed by the age of 15 & studies have shown that teens are as accurate as adults when it comes to understanding if an activity is dangerous. Their brains are just more motivated by the rewards of taking a risk than deterred by its dangers. So even if they know something might be bad—speeding, drinking too much, trying new drugs—they get more pleasure from taking the risks anyway.
Central to our understanding of how teens learn is “pruning”—a period when the brain begins to shed some of the grey-matter cells built up in childhood to make room for the growth of white matter. A long period of grey-matter growth in childhood, followed by vigorous pruning in adolescence, has been linked to higher intelligence, Jensen says.
It’s for this reason that Jay Giedd, an expert in child & adolescent brain imaging at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, describes the teen years as a special period of “use it or lose it” for the brain. Brain cells grown in childhood that continue to get used in adolescence form new connections, while those that go unused wither away. It’s also another reason why parents should be anxious about what happens during the teen years—adolescence now appears to be a period that can make or break a child’s intelligence.
A significant consequence of pruning is that IQ, once thought to be fixed for life after childhood, can in fact change dramatically during the teen years.
Learning is a process of repeatedly exposing the brain to something that stimulates the production of dopamine, which strengthens connections in the brain’s reward centre & helps form new memories. Addiction, therefore, is simply a form of “overlearning” by the brain, Jensen says. That process can be controlled by the prefrontal cortex, but since teens are so primed for learning & have less of an ability to access the prefrontal cortex, they’re also more susceptible to addictions.
In an era marked by the ideological tug-of-war over how best to raise our teenagers, what’s a parent to do with this new science of the teenage brain? More rules—an approach exemplified by Yale professor Amy Chua’s 2011 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother? Or in intervening too much, do parents risk raising teens whose brains never learn how to become an adult—an approach typified by the backlash against “helicopter parenting” & movements like “slow parenting” & “free-range kids.”
In Teenage Brain, Jensen puts herself squarely in the camp of the highly involved parent. She encourages parents to proof-read their teen’s homework, help them make lists to prioritize their assignments, watch them as they do schoolwork to see if they’re getting distracted & to not be afraid to “sound like a broken record” in reminding teens over & over again about the dangers that could befall them.
She encourages parents to “be your teen’s frontal lobes” & to “try to think for your teenage sons & daughters until their own brains are ready to take over the job.”
Jensen argues that it’s a parent’s job to protect their teens from their own often short-sighted behaviour, while allowing them enough room for “safe failures.”
In the quagmire of parental advice, it’s no surprise that the counterargument to the neuroscience approach to parenting is robust, & passionate. Psychologist Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, believes that adolescent rebellion has little to do with brain development & lots to do with how society treats teenagers. He argues scientists have it backward: teens don’t act out because they have immature brains struggling to navigate an adult world, but because they have adult brains railing against a society that treats them like children.
Other research is challenging the notion that teens have a less mature & less connected prefrontal cortex & are therefore inherently more impulsive than adults.
At Temple University, Steinberg has used a car-racing video game to show that when teens are alone they perform as well as adults on tasks involving a tradeoff of risk & reward. But when other teens are in the room watching, adolescents tend to make far riskier decisions. Adults show no difference if other adults watch them, suggesting that teen risk-taking is likely social.
BJ Casey, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Cornell University, found that teens could be less impulsive if they were offered rewards. The greater the reward, the longer teens took to make a decision, suggesting that parents trying to control a hot-headed teen might want to offer rewards for good decisions rather than punishing bad ones.
“You look at the high school dropout rates & the people that fall off the curve not because of academic reasons, but because of peer pressure or drugs,” Jensen says. “It’s so sad because this is a time where you can actually make up for your innate weaknesses. We could get so much more out of our teenagers—& who they become later in life, in many cases—if we took a different approach to this window of time.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conventional wisdom has long held that our brains are largely developed by puberty. However, research in the past 10-15 years has shown that our brains continue to develop in fundamental ways through the teen years & even into the late 20s & 30s. In fact, Jensen argues in her new book, The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents & Young Adults, the teenage years comprise one of the brain’s most critical periods for development—likely every bit as crucial as early childhood. “That 7 years in their life is, in a way, as important as their first 7 years of life,” Jensen says. “It is probably one of the most important 7-year [periods] in their entire life.”
Among the most popular misconceptions about brain development is the idea that the most important changes happen in the first 3 years of life. This “myth of three,” has been the source of intense parental anxiety over the fear that “adults are in a race against time to provide stimulation to their infants before their synapses are lost,” writes Paul Howard-Jones, a professor of neuroscience & education at the University of Bristol in the journal Nature. ... Behind the seemingly invincible teenage boy with the booming voice & adult body is a brain that is still incredibly vulnerable to everything from sports-related concussions to mental illness & addiction. New research is uncovering ways in which the activities that so often typify teenage years, such as experimenting with cigarettes & marijuana & alcohol, can lower a teen’s IQ or increase susceptibility to mental illness later on. Chronic stress stemming from family violence, poverty or bullying has also been linked to changes in the teen brain that can raise the risk of mood disorders or learning disabilities.
At the heart of our understanding of brain development are 2 basic concepts: grey matter & white matter. Grey matter consists of neurons, the brain cells that form the building blocks of the brain. White matter, axons, are the connections that form between grey matter, helping to move information from one area of the brain to the next.
While grey-matter growth is indeed almost completely finished by the age of 6, white matter—the wiring between brain cells—continues to develop well into the 20s. In fact, says Jensen, that wiring is only about 80% complete by the age of 18.
Along with new wiring, the brains of teens & young adults are also undergoing a process called myelination, in which those white-matter connections are being coated in a protective fatty material. Myelin acts as a form of insulation, allowing signals to move faster between brain cells, helping to speed the flow of information in the brain. Since both the wiring to the prefrontal cortex, & the insulation, is incomplete, teens often take longer to access their prefrontal cortexes, meaning they have a harder time making accurate judgments & controlling their impulses. The process of myelination continues into the 30s, giving rise to questions about how old someone must be to be considered to have a fully developed “adult” brain.
At the same time that teens’ brains are laying down connections & insulation, puberty has triggered pituitary glands to release hormones that are acting on the limbic system, the brain’s emotional centre. The combination of heightened emotions & an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex explains why teens are often prone to emotional outbursts, says Jensen, & also why they seek out more emotionally charged situations, from sad movies to dangerous driving.
Hormones also appear to have a different effect in teens than they do in adults. The hormone THP, which is released by the body in response to stress, has a calming effect in adults, but actually seems to have the opposite effect in teens, increasing stress. It’s one reason why teens are prone to anxiety & post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s also a good reason, Jensen says, why parents & schools should be sensitive to the problem of bullying.
Along with new wiring, insulation & hormones, teen brains are highly sensitive to the release of dopamine, which plays on the areas of the brain that govern pleasure & helps explain why teens seem to take so many risks.
It’s not that they don’t know any better. In fact, reasoning abilities are largely developed by the age of 15 & studies have shown that teens are as accurate as adults when it comes to understanding if an activity is dangerous. Their brains are just more motivated by the rewards of taking a risk than deterred by its dangers. So even if they know something might be bad—speeding, drinking too much, trying new drugs—they get more pleasure from taking the risks anyway.
Central to our understanding of how teens learn is “pruning”—a period when the brain begins to shed some of the grey-matter cells built up in childhood to make room for the growth of white matter. A long period of grey-matter growth in childhood, followed by vigorous pruning in adolescence, has been linked to higher intelligence, Jensen says.
It’s for this reason that Jay Giedd, an expert in child & adolescent brain imaging at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, describes the teen years as a special period of “use it or lose it” for the brain. Brain cells grown in childhood that continue to get used in adolescence form new connections, while those that go unused wither away. It’s also another reason why parents should be anxious about what happens during the teen years—adolescence now appears to be a period that can make or break a child’s intelligence.
A significant consequence of pruning is that IQ, once thought to be fixed for life after childhood, can in fact change dramatically during the teen years.
Learning is a process of repeatedly exposing the brain to something that stimulates the production of dopamine, which strengthens connections in the brain’s reward centre & helps form new memories. Addiction, therefore, is simply a form of “overlearning” by the brain, Jensen says. That process can be controlled by the prefrontal cortex, but since teens are so primed for learning & have less of an ability to access the prefrontal cortex, they’re also more susceptible to addictions.
In an era marked by the ideological tug-of-war over how best to raise our teenagers, what’s a parent to do with this new science of the teenage brain? More rules—an approach exemplified by Yale professor Amy Chua’s 2011 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother? Or in intervening too much, do parents risk raising teens whose brains never learn how to become an adult—an approach typified by the backlash against “helicopter parenting” & movements like “slow parenting” & “free-range kids.”
In Teenage Brain, Jensen puts herself squarely in the camp of the highly involved parent. She encourages parents to proof-read their teen’s homework, help them make lists to prioritize their assignments, watch them as they do schoolwork to see if they’re getting distracted & to not be afraid to “sound like a broken record” in reminding teens over & over again about the dangers that could befall them.
She encourages parents to “be your teen’s frontal lobes” & to “try to think for your teenage sons & daughters until their own brains are ready to take over the job.”
Jensen argues that it’s a parent’s job to protect their teens from their own often short-sighted behaviour, while allowing them enough room for “safe failures.”
In the quagmire of parental advice, it’s no surprise that the counterargument to the neuroscience approach to parenting is robust, & passionate. Psychologist Robert Epstein, author of The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, believes that adolescent rebellion has little to do with brain development & lots to do with how society treats teenagers. He argues scientists have it backward: teens don’t act out because they have immature brains struggling to navigate an adult world, but because they have adult brains railing against a society that treats them like children.
Other research is challenging the notion that teens have a less mature & less connected prefrontal cortex & are therefore inherently more impulsive than adults.
At Temple University, Steinberg has used a car-racing video game to show that when teens are alone they perform as well as adults on tasks involving a tradeoff of risk & reward. But when other teens are in the room watching, adolescents tend to make far riskier decisions. Adults show no difference if other adults watch them, suggesting that teen risk-taking is likely social.
BJ Casey, director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Cornell University, found that teens could be less impulsive if they were offered rewards. The greater the reward, the longer teens took to make a decision, suggesting that parents trying to control a hot-headed teen might want to offer rewards for good decisions rather than punishing bad ones.
“You look at the high school dropout rates & the people that fall off the curve not because of academic reasons, but because of peer pressure or drugs,” Jensen says. “It’s so sad because this is a time where you can actually make up for your innate weaknesses. We could get so much more out of our teenagers—& who they become later in life, in many cases—if we took a different approach to this window of time.”
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