Your 3-year old can name all the states in the country, but you catch him as he prepares to stick a knife into an electrical outlet.
Your 8-year old is a regular piano prodigy, but he borrows his dad’s cell phone and leaves it in the front yard, overnight. In the rain.
Your 16-year old is inducted into National Honor Society the evening before he posts on social media that his parents are gone for a few days and he has the house to himself.
How do such smart kids do such foolish things? Parents have been scratching their heads over this conundrum since the beginning of time. American humorist Will Rogers reflected on this disconnect, observing that “Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
But now, the science of the human brain finally offers another clear explanation. While cognitive functioning resides in parts of the brain which develop early in life, judgment develops in the prefrontal cortex—the final act in brain development. It’s where we organize our thoughts, pay attention to things we want to focus on, recognize and measure risk, and weigh consequences of our actions.
Some call the prefrontal cortex the “air traffic control system” of human beings, responsible for continually adjusting our behavior as we read the world around us. Young women complete this development at age 21 or 22. Alas, the young male brain takes a little longer with full prefrontal cortex development occurring around age 28.
So throughout their early lives, we see cognition racing out ahead as we observe evidence of such intelligence in our children. It just doesn’t make sense to us that they could still take risks and fail to understand the consequences of their actions when they seem so capable of rational thought.
As parents we fear for their safety as they navigate their world without the benefit of fully functional air traffic control. Our kids still need us, even in young adulthood.
It’s a fine line, and one we’re smart to cross lovingly and strategically. But if real danger looms or if inappropriate behavior begins foreshadowing life-changing costs, we can try to help our kids control some of that errant air traffic as we wait for those fully matured brains to come in for a landing.
