Mommy had an interesting new patient in the office yesterday. The patient owns a non-profit company which engages children to work on an art product to give to local children who are hospitalized. The recipients of these works of art are told that other children made it for them. Essentially, it’s “kids helping other kids.” The works of art are never sold, but always given for free.
The process seems simple enough, but it’s the underlying message that is really key. This patient informed Mommy that studies have shown that the frontal lobe of children develop very quickly between 11-17 years old. Therefore, it is very important to engage children in positive worthwhile activities during that time so that they do not get stuck in negativity. Part of the work of this non-profit organization is to give children this positive environment. Volunteering in other ways also produces the same positive energy. This age range also coincides with being an adolescent and contrary to some schools of thought, adolescents actually need their parents even more than when they were infants or toddlers. Note to Mommy: Your job doesn’t necessary get easier after I am I grow out of toddler-hood.
Mommy is grateful for the tidbits of knowledge from this patient. I’m documenting it in the blog to make sure Mommy doesn’t forget 10 years from now.
For those who are not familiar with the function of the frontal lobe, here are layman’s terms taken from wikipedia.org:
“The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events. Therefore, it is involved in higher mental functions.
The frontal lobes also play an important part in retaining longer term memories which are not task-based. These are often memories associated with emotions derived from input from the brain’s limbic system. The frontal lobe modifies those emotions to generally fit socially acceptable norms.”