What's Wrong With The Teenage Mind?

WSJ.com:

Children today reach puberty earlier and adulthood later. The result: A lot of teenage weirdness. Alison Gopnik on how we might readjust adolescence.

"What was he thinking?" It's the familiar cry of bewildered parents trying to understand why their teenagers act the way they do.

How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash? Why does the girl who knows all about birth control find herself pregnant by a boy she doesn't even like? What happened to the gifted, imaginative child who excelled through high school but then dropped out of college, drifted from job to job and now lives in his parents' basement?

Read the whole story: WSJ.com

Comments

[J R M]

03:50 PM on 02/01/2012

People typically assume responsibility when they have to make decisions and truly suffer / enjoy the consequences. I have been trying to treat my daughter, who is 14, as a semi-adult for about 2 years. It helps that she is serious and thoughtful. She told me what she was interested in engineering/medicine and what she wanted to avoid (the social games in middle and high school). I told her what her options were and the issues with each. She chose - and I have enabled, even over the concerns of her mother.

She has been studying 30 to far in excess of 40 hours a week for the past 2 years and will be off to college for and engineering degree next year. As she gets more experience she will choose between graduate engineering or a MD/Ph.D track.

Her 11 year old brother is less responsible, but I am providing the framework and structure for him to learn good habits and master his subject area. I expect him to be a commuter student for at least several years. After he earns his engineering and business degree, he is on his own.

[jf12]

11:05 AM on 01/31/2012

Since being responsible means doing what you should do but don't want to do, unforced apprenticeships are not the royal road to responsibility. Neither is forcing teens to labor in the fields, the factories, homes, wherever, a viable option because they'd be taking jobs (remember, like Newt's janitorial suggestion) away from adults. One solution to making teens more responsible is to hold them responsible, with consequences.