Entries for August 2008

When I'm not writing about children and families, I'm covering brain science. Mix those two together and you can see why I'm fascinated with the question of whether teenagers' brains, which are still under construction, make them immature and unreliable, fit only to download Jonas Brothers MP3s. That seems to be the message we get from popular culture and from the legal system.

The new research on how the brain develops has led me to start looking for competent teenagers—not kids who get perfect SATs, but ones who are working on learning the skills they'll need to be responsible, compassionate adults. In that search, I just came across Alex and Brett Harris, 19-year-old twins from Gresham, Ore., whose new book, Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, challenges teenagers to push beyond their comfort zone. The Harrises also hosted "Do Hard Things" conferences for teenagers in seven cities last spring and summer. I caught up with Alex and Brett as they were packing to head out for freshman year at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va. Here's an edited version of our conversation:

Good news for parents—last Thursday President Bush signed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, the biggest effort in the past 30 years to protect children from dangerous toys and products.

This comes after a horrendous 2007, when millions of children's toys were recalled for containing toxic amounts of lead, potentially lethal magnets, and other hazards.

A 6-year-old asks at dinner, "What's a blow job?" Four-year-old girls mimic Britney Spears's pelvis-grinding gyrations. Eight-year-old girls plot how to manipulate their parents to buy them "sexy" midriff-baring tops. And fifth-grade boys tell their teacher they know you don't have to like a person to have sex with them because they've seen pornography on the Internet.

After I read these real-life examples of the sexualization of childhood in So Sexy So Soon, the new book by Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne, I felt nauseated. I have a rising kindergartner whose idea of being a big girl means going without sippy cups, and I'm nowhere near prepared for dealing with the blow job question at the dinner table. So I called up Levin, a professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston, to find out what on Earth is going on. Here are excerpts of our conversation:

Middle school is a minefield for many children, a volatile mix of sexuality and social cliques that can be overwhelming for kids who sailed serenely through grade school. That's particularly true for the 25 percent of girls who go through puberty early and are at greater risk for problems like delinquency, eating disorders, and depression. While these girls may look grown up, the bottom line is, they still need involved parents.

"There is a lot of pressure on this age group from media and peers to look older, act older, dress older," says Sylvie Mrug, a psychologist at the University of AlabamaBirmingham who has studied 10-to-12-year-olds around the country. "But mentally and psychologically, they are still immature compared to a 15-year-old."