Giving kids and teens more responsibility

I recently read a terrific article in the Wall Street Journal called "What's Wrong with the Teenage Mind?"  In the article, the author describes the challenges faced by teens today, and in truth, by the changing nature of adolescence in general.  Aside from encouraging you to read the article, I also wanted to point out one of the key themes of the article: "If you think of the teenage brain as a car, today's adolescents acquire an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake."  In other words, teens' minds and urges and passions are revving up, but we as a society are not providing nearly enough opportunities at young enough ages to develop the 'steering' and 'brakes' needed to control the car... which would be way more opportunities to take responsibility and be in charge of things (with supervision and guidance). 

The author points out that on average, puberty hits earlier and adulthood hits later than was the case in previous generations.  However, the types of responsibilities that children and teens used to have are going by the wayside - even jobs like babysitting and the 'paper route' have largely disappeared or given to people who are older (for example, I don't know of almost any parents in our area who typically hire tweens and young teens, ages 10-13, to babysit their children). 

In the article, we are reminded that all humans need to develop a 'control system', and that it is dependent upon learning...  but we can only learn when we have opportunities to learn... i.e. "You come to make better decisions by making not-so-good decisions and then correcting them.  You get to be a good planner by making plans, implementing them and seeing the results again and again."  The bottom line is that kids and teenagers need lots of practice - with jobs, internships, activities that require real commitment and most importantly, responsibility.  We try to provide that in the Jewish community, and certainly here at Isaiah we give teens responsibility as Camp Kefli counselors, Religious School TA's, leaders of LAFTY, and more.  However, we can always do more, and this article has made me think about how we can give children more chances to learn and grow in ways that provide the 'steering' and 'brakes' desperately needed by the time the 'acceleration' really hits in adolescence!