Still Baking

(source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm)

I remember reading something several years ago that said that a child’s brain isn’t fully developed until they are twenty-three years old.  The article even referred to the child’s brain as being “half baked,” which made me imagine a cake that still had quite a while to go in the oven. 

At the time, my oldest son was well into his teen years.  He seemed to make one peculiar decision after another to the point where I wondered if I’d done something wrong.  What crucial parenting step did I miss?  Learning about half-baked brains made me feel so much better.  There wasn’t anything wrong with my son or my parenting.  His poor judgment was simply a normal part of adolescent brain development.  It gave me great comfort to know that he wouldn’t be flaky forever.

The other night, my middle son, fully in the midst of teenage half-bakedness, did a really stupid thing.  He thought it was a dandy idea to go off-road driving in a friend’s field at nighttime.  Who does this?  NO ONE does this because it’s a really stupid thing to do.  You can’t see any obstacles that may be in the field.  You can’t see any places where the field might drop off. 

He didn’t let me in on his plans or I’d have told him it was a really stupid thing to do… in the nicest possible way, of course.

So my kid with his half-baked brain went off-roading at night.  He didn’t see a huge drop-off in the field and as a result, significantly damaged his truck.  He was not hurt, fortunately, but his truck needs repairs that will likely be in the thousands-of-dollars range.  Since his father and I make him pay for his own vehicle repairs, this is going to be one painful and costly lesson.

When bad decisions like this happen, decisions that would’ve been obviously bad to any rational person, I tend to launch into hyper-parenting mode.  I feel compelled to think of every single stupid thing that he might want to attempt so that I can warn him about it: do not drive off cliffs; do not leap from tall buildings; do not lick the sharp edge of a steak knife.  You know – just like those ridiculous warnings that you often see on power tools.  In fact, whoever came up with the warning “do not use lawnmower to trim hedges” surely must have spent some time with a teenager.

Some of the best parenting advice I’ve ever received came from a friend of mine.  She said that when she gets crazy worrying about her kids, she remembers all of the stupid things that she did when she was a teenager.  Somehow she survived just fine in spite of it all.  She said she chooses to trust that whatever benevolent force in the universe kept her safe, that same loving force will also be there to protect and guide her own children.

I hope she’s right.  These offspring of mine are evidently going to need a LOT of protecting.