Inside the Teenage Mind

There are two new interesting studies out this week that deal with youth.

Does your teenager tend to engage in risky behavior? Well they can't help it. The region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior isn't fully developed until you turn 25! Most kids are going to pick a career and a lifemate before the decision making part of their brain is mature. Well, at least that's what our first interesting teenage study of the day says:

"...teen recklessness is partly the result of a critical gap in time -- starting with the thrill-seeking that comes in puberty and ending when the brain learns to temper such behavior.

Since children today reach puberty earlier than previously, about age 13, and the brain's reasoning center doesn't reach maturity until the mid-20s, Steinberg said, 'This period of recklessness has never been as long as it is now.'"

Source: Charlotte Observer

The second study addresses depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, conduct disorders, and thoughts of suicide:

"These mental and emotional problems are affecting the nation and its future. 'Large numbers of children, even including those who could be considered privileged, are no longer developing the empathy, moral commitment, and ability to love necessary to maintain our society at the level that has always been our dream,' he writes.

So what's the problem? A significant cause of this 'crisis,' the commission said, is that children and teens are experiencing 'a lack of connectedness ... to other people, and [lack of] deep connections to moral and spiritual meaning.'"

So what's the solution? Apparently, you need to get your kids into a youth group (oh you know this is going to be in the Miami Baptist Newsletter next month!).

"Religion is the key -- more specifically, the religious communities that are able to transmit the beliefs, values and morals that help give young people a sense of the transcendent, an ordered universe and their own place in it."

Source: Crosswalk.com