Children's brains make connection as they grow up

Q.

At what age should a child be allowed to cross the street on his or her own?

A.

Ten.

But this gives me an opportunity to talk about the developing brain. You know, most 7-year-olds understand perfectly how to cross the street. They know all the little steps you are supposed to do and why.

But they don't do them.

We all know inherently that children are not just little adults. When you hear people say that, they usually are talking about the physical aspects, you know, growing bones, susceptibility to certain infection, resilient hearts, fragile emotion.

To put it very simply, parts of the brain develop by making connections with other parts of the brain. The brain can be seen as several modules, getting better at doing their own thing, but also learning slowly to interact.

We tend to think that if we have a concept and wish to use it, that all we need is intellectual knowledge. This is adult thinking (although frankly, I think, we can all relate to knowing something intellectually and not quite applying it). Kid thinking is different. At age 7, for example, what you might say or report to a teacher or parent is not how you live your life. A 7-year-old child may know how to cross the street, or know not to pet a strange dog, or know not to follow a ball into traffic. But they don't access the information. The cure for this is not more information. They still won't access it well.

A few other errors I see when parents expect children to be more like adults:

For children ages 2 to 5, I see a lot of parents explain the rightness or wrongness of their acts. For example: "We shouldn't pull on the dog's tail because it hurts him. We should be gentle and loving to animals." This is laudable moral guidance. But for most kids at this age, it's invisible. I believe strongly in using a positive and negative rewards system and have written about it in this column before. Immediacy in performing time-outs and what not to do is important, and the explanations just get in the way. So just do the time-out.

Although we don't like to think of it, our darling 3-year-olds are pretty much amoral creatures. They have only a vague idea of right and wrong, but they have a clear idea of allowed versus not allowed. That suffices for them. Morality, if you like that term, emerges more around 6 or 7.

Regarding adolescents: We all went to high school, we have all seen the tremendous upheaval that kids go through at this age. The irrational and high-risk behaviors are prevalent and worrisome. Yet education about smoking, drugs and sex make a much smaller dent than we would like.

We have this image that if we just explained something in the right way and at the right time, great enlightenment will occur.

Adolescents look a lot like adults, and they do many of the things adults do. They drive, they work, they have romantic relationships and they have opinions.

Although they are physically mature or very close, the frontal lobes are still under construction. The frontal lobes do a lot of what is called "executive function," including making judgments. This area of the brain is not fully mature until age 25.

I don't know what we can do to make the teenagers more steady. I am generally not surprised when the cascade of information hits the teenage brain and doesn't stick. The social part of the brain is very active, however. Peers have more power than experts. And adolescents are more likely to avoid smoking because their friends think it's icky than because of anything the surgeon general says.

Getting the right peer group is difficult, and quite frankly, often a matter of luck.

I know I am stating a lot of obvious stuff. But just beware that children, no matter how mature they seem, do not think like you do.

(7/8/07)

Dr. Norton's column appears on the second Monday of each month in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and is reposted here. Contact Dr. Norton by phone at (414) 228-4800 or via e-mail.

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