I'm starting to go the opposite direction of all the "you're a literal baby infant until 25 bc your bwain is a baby bwain :(" shit
We should be treating teens as more adult than we do. I don't mean some lowering the age of consent creep shit, I mean presuming competence. Get a job, learn life skills, learn to cook, be fully responsible for a pet, walk places alone (in daylight) or with a friend, have intergenerational friendships, teach skills to littler kids, be someone people can trust with more than wiping their own ass. Be someone they themselves can trust to do stuff and go places. We're stealing children's confidence by treating them like they can't do anything. Treat them like they can and should do many adult things and more will find the confidence to practice at them.
Yes, the brain isn't finished growing when you're like 15. No, you shouldn't get treated like a preschooler till it is. The general experience of adulthood is like 90% practice 10% maturity I think. The maturity is needed but it doesn't account for much if you just do nothing.
YES. And with support! Teach your teens to make their own doctors appointments by sitting by them in case something comes up they don't know the answer to. Show your elementary schoolers how to cook a meal. Teach them how to read a map and guide you where they want to go. Kids are capable.
Your brain develops when you fucking use it, so let teens use their brains!
Everything here except 'get a job' because education is already a full-time job.
I say this as a person who did labor for money as a child and teenager and should not have had to.
And especially: *teach your kids, however small, what they can do in emergencies." That learning (because you trusted them with it as important) will sink deep into their brains and help them cope for the rest of their lives. They will know, from tiny times, what coping looks like. It'll lead them toward strengths they never knew they had.
When I was still nursing in NY and occasionally helped out our colleagues in ER, several times I saw small children who'd been taught what to do save their whole families from burning buildings by having been coached in how to use the phone to call for help and say what the trouble was, even when their parents and other older kids were unresponsive.
Teach your kids to rely on themselves, even when "people who'll tell them what to do if they're not sure" are unavailable. ...Because they may not always be available.
























