REWARD

I was sharpening my largest knife.  Preparing to slice/chop/mince.

Youngest Child leans beside a cutting board stacked with onions, garlic, carrots, celery and peppers.

"Can I help, Mom?"

He is twelve years old. I adore him.

When he was 5, he tried surfing on the arm of a chair and fell nose first into an end table.

When he was 7, he discovered an old switch blade in the woods. Following a trail of miniature blood drops from patio to closed bathroom door, I found him trying to bandaid a fingertip that needed six stitches.

Nowadays he climbs to the canopies of 60 ft Sycamore trees - because they offer a much better view than the rooftop of our house.

Youngest Child is twelve. I adore him. He scares the bejeebers out of me.

"I'm about to start dinner," I answer casually. " How would you like to help?"

"I’ll chop the onions and garlic, K?"

Youngest Child eyes the knife I am holding. My minds-eye video reel of beloved boy surfing/switchblading/sycamoring begins spinning, inducing vivid recollections of FEAR.

  
The steel blade that I am holding flashes and gleams. It has morphed into an evil Disney character.

I take a singer’s breath and pull the cutting board toward me. “Let me show you how to hold the knife,” I say. “The goal is chopped onions, bud. Not chopped fingertips.”

The expression in Youngest Child’s eyes? Shock and Joy.  “I can do it, Mom. I’ll be careful.”

He did it. Magnificently. I watched each slice, chop, and mince, marveling that my twelve year old more capably prepared those onions and garlic than many a sous chef.

I wondered what other tasks he or his siblings might execute so well: tasks I never tasked them with, because they were too young, or the job too difficult or dangerous.

Youngest Child Chopping came to mind today as I read What’s Wrong with the Teenage Mind by Alison Gopnik in the Wall Street Journal. Gopnik, a professor of psychology at U Cal Berkeley explains that over the past generation, the developmental timing of the two different neural and psychological systems that interact to transform children into adults has changed, profoundly altering adolescence and producing new kinds of adolescent angst.

Essentially, puberty begins much earlier than ever, but children take on adult roles much later.

 
The first system, dealing with emotion and motivation, is closely linked to the biological and chemical changes of puberty, and involves the areas of the brain that respond to rewards. Research studies suggest that adolescents are reckless because the reward centers of the adolescent brain are much more active than those of children or adults. Adolescents overestimate rewards, rather than underestimating risks. And they most desire social rewards, specifically the respect of their peers. As Gopnik  states, “Puberty not only turns on the motivational and emotional system with new force, it also turns it away from the family and toward the world of equals. Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.”

 
The second crucial brain system dealing with control is the system that inhibits impulses and guides decision-making. It encourages long-term planning and delays gratification. This control system depends on learning and experience, and continues to develop during adolescence and adulthood.

 
Big OOPS for us? In contemporary society, the relationship between these two systems is out of whack. Puberty and the motivational system kick in earlier, but the control system is delayed because our kids have very little experience learning or practicing the kinds of tasks that they'll encounter as adults. 

Because most of our children's time is spent at school, or preparing for future schooling, there is little time for jobs once associated with childhood and adolescence: babysitting, paper routes, scooping ice cream. Our kids aren’t learning how to soothe a baby or change a diaper. They don’t know how to make change, bus a table, or solve a problem for a disgruntled customer.  

Even though the growth of the control system depends on achievement and experience in the ‘real’ world,’ such  achievements and experiences, i.e rewards are increasingly delayed in our modern society. Pediatrician and developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl at U Cal Berkeley describes it thus: “Today's adolescents develop an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.”

 
Our kids are smarter than ever, and their prolonged period of dependence - from childhood to college and beyond - allows them to learn more than ever before.

 
But clearly, experience shapes our brains. And we need to figure out ways to give our pre-teens and teenagers a chance to “slowly acquire more skill and more freedom” instead of simply giving them more more classes, homework, extra-curriculars.

 
Consider: Cultural psychologist Barbara Rogoff has studied informal education in a Guatemalan Indian society, and found that apprenticeships allowed even young children to become adept at difficult and dangerous tasks- like using a machete.

 
Gopnik challenges parents to try to arrange more opportunities for apprenticeships that provide challenging real-life experiences with a degree of protection and supervision. She believes adolescents should spend more time watching and helping scientists and scholars work, rather than simply listening to their lectures. They should alternate summer camps and travel with summer jobs that demand real responsibility.

 
“The good news,” Gopnik writes, “is that we don't have to just accept the developmental patterns of adolescent brains. We can actually shape and change them.“
 

I have my marching orders.
 

Think I’ll skip the machete.
 

Bring on the knives.

 

QUING Hereby Decrees:  Exhale Fear. Breathe Accomplishment.