Spring has sprung and so has the urge for boys to get in touch with their hormonal urges. Yep, you heard it, this week I've had to deal with boys not being able to control themselves. I won't say a thing about the girls who'll participate in the lack of control of their peers just yet.
The tween years are such a challenge for kids that they seem to be more of a cruel joke that nature thrusts upon them than an attempt at allowing them to grow. Here's a list of challenges off the top of my head, only based on what I've had to work with this week with boys (I'll discuss girls next):
Deciding on loyalty vs doing the 'right' thing.
Deciding if doing the right thing will have any effect.
Deciding to solve problems on their own, to ask a friend for help or to ask an adult.
Am I interested in romance?
We used to be such good friends... What happened? Why can't things be like they used to? What am I going to do about it?
If I think that girl is pretty, does it mean I like her? And if I do, should I try to spend more time with her? What if she doesn't feel the same way? What will my friends think?
If I watch porn does that make abnormal, a pervert or is it ok?
I can't keep my hands to myself.
Boys are so confused at age 10 - 12 that they wish there was a magic wand adults could wave to make everything perfect. By age 13 they come to the painful realization that there's no such thing as a magic wand and that the solution to their problems will only come out of hard work. Also by age 13 they understand that the paranoia they felt about everyone being aware of their problems is silly and that most boys their age are experiencing similar things.
During the tween years one of the most complex problems is adjusting to physical and emotional change. Wet dreams, sudden erections in public, daydreaming about girls, shyness, comparisons and mockery in the lockerroom, among others, are all part of what boys experience. Unfortunatelly, the adaptation to physical change is not accompanied, yet, with tools for hypothesizing about those changes. Until the brain has not really become an adult brain (way into your 20's), the frontal lobes are not connected yet and the advanced functions of the brain are not fully functional. There's less myelin in the tween's and teen's brain, so nerve signals don't flow as freely. By contrast, in the mid-30's people have the highest concentration of myelin, so parents that age end up understanding less about how their kids simply can't control themselves.
The basic premise in the tween years should be this: kids aren't capable of seeing the effects of their actions or the consequences for others. They have a deminished capacity to predict outcomes. So they simply act and end up being seen as self-centered. So, when this week a boy brought his laptop to school (with broadband) and opened some really violent videos and showed them to unsuspecting passers by, he wasn't thinking. Adults might think, "How daft", but really, what did anybody expect? A boy, age 10, with unlimited Internet connection is just simply a ticking time-bomb. If not he, a classmate would have made the same torpid mistake. Another boy this week took a younger boy's keyboard away while at the library and typed a search term that would yield erotic images. He also typed swear words into another boy's word processor. When speaking to these boys, they pretty easily understand the silliness of their actions, but, of course, after the fact. The same thing happened to the boys I had to call in for lifting the skirts of their classmates and of girls in other classes. The boys who started a game that involved bumping into girls also understood how inappropriate the game was once we had a chat.
Parents and educators can help kids a lot by helping them see that they need to be more aware of the consequences. They can do this by pointing out that children need to use their mistakes to shed light on new experiences and by making it clear, in words that kids can understand, that acting on impulse is a problem, but not a moral/ethical problem. Issues related to sexual education should not be shrouded in guilt. That model has been used before with poor results; guilt doesn't work. Children need to understand. "That's bad" only confuses kids more and opens a gateway to two other problems; closing off communication and hiding away to try new things.
Full, unlimited access, at whatever hour, to do anything can be remedied by correcting the disastrous recipe with the following: setting limits and providing an honest indication that lack of control is damaging (examples about driving are useful here), discussing about what we do affects others' feelings and health, talking about how learning about self-control helps us to really be in control when we need it, communicating that sexuality is a good thing and that it needs to be treated with respect and affection for the good of our own self-respect and sense of self-worth and for the good of the ones we love.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, rules are necessary and desirable. Children and teens need to understand the driving force behind rules so as to make sense of them and put them to good use.
