|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 6:38 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 6:48 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 7:19 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2009 9:15 pm
|
|
|
|
Okay now that I'm finished laughing hysterically at your original post, GTR, let me just mention a few things that are still fresh in my brain from my child and adolescent development class and my interpersonal communication class:
1) At no one point does the healthy human brain ever stop developing neural pathways. Every time an neuron fires, it is reinforced and strengthened. By about the 23rd week of gestation, the human brain is basically fully formed, all of its parts are present, albeit not fully developed. The brain develops as it is used. That being said, adolescents and toddlers have something in common. Their brains are going through a massive reorganization. Tons of neurons are actually being selectively pruned from the brain to make way for more permanent information. This is why you may have hated steak or fish or whatever other food as a kid but love it during adulthood. This is also why it is easier to learn a new skill in early adolescence than it is in adulthood, because the neural pathways for that activity may have died off due to lack of use in adolescence. The teen years involve such an explosive growth and pruning of the neural pathways in the brain that it's no wonder your average teen is confused, angsty, fickle, and unpredictable. It's the grown-up equivalent of the terrible twos -- quite literally. The brain goes through a very similar process right around the age of two.
Actually between the growth spurts, the mood swings, the sudden assertion of independence, and the angst (aka tantrums), two-year-olds and twelve- to sixteen-year-olds in particular have an awful lot in common.
Of course, just like the terrible twos, the troubled teens last a lot longer for some people than they do for others... certain members of this guild, for example. Also, some people actually never develop the neural pathways for being civil human beings because they never ever bothered to practice those skills and strengthen those parts of their brains. Don't worry though guys, even though your window of opportunity may have passed, you can still learn those new skills through practice and repetition. It will just be harder than it would be if you were building those neural pathways from childhood.
Practicing new skills and being consistent about it is very very important. I would not be nearly so proficient at life as I am right now (and I generally suck at life, thanks, ADHD!) if my parents had not worked tirelessly to teach me important s**t like how you're supposed to do laundry so you don't smell like a homeless person, and how you're supposed to ask questions if you don't understand something, and how you don't pick your nose in public or walk up to random strangers in the street and strike up conversations as if you were old friends.
You know whose prefrontal cortex is physically undeveloped? People with FAS. Don't drink when you're pregnant or planning to get someone pregnant, or you'll have a kid with really poor critical thinking and problem solving skills.
We lucky people with ADHD have abnormal activity in our prefrontal cortexes (cortecies?) -- except when we're concentrating, and then we have less activity there than "normal" people. Apparently we concentrate with some other part of our brain, which might be why we sometimes have trouble with it.
2) finally! This bit is triggered by something either Erve or Ciel said on page 2 or something... I'm not going back for the exact quote. According to my textbooks, something like 7.5% of the meaning of what we say is in the words themselves, and the rest is nonverbal or paraverbal. This explains why so many people get defensive over your posts, GTR. Your writing style is very abrupt and direct, which comes across as abrasive to a lot of people. Also, most of us know and appreciate the fact that you frequently behave like an arrogant a**, and since we have neither your body language nor your tone of voice to clarify your intent, our brains automatically use our prior impressions of you to fill in the gaps in a way that makes sense to us. We automatically subconsciously assume that you are behaving in a manner consistent with what we already know about you. similarly, we take just about everything Sav says as being inflammatory, or just about anything Omni says as either randomly weird or ridiculously argumentative.
Now that I've babbled you a novella, I'll go back to writing papers for school.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2009 7:45 am
|
|
|
|
Kalib The only thing I disagree with is the wall of very bright red text. It's hard to read against a white background. This is why I think the laws pertaining to adulthood are stupid. 18 years old no matter how smart they are or how ready they might think they are, are not capable of handling adulthood. I speak from experience and I'd say I'm pretty mature. The legal age of maturity should be 25. Life expectancy is on the rise we don't need to worry about pumping out 20 kids in the hopes that 8 of them will live to run the farm when we get old. It would save everyone some hardship.
I disagree, 18 is when kids are done school and should be able to start thinking for themselves, good or bad decisions. If they don't start having to act like adults, regardless of ready or not, then they won't ever learn how to.
And GTR, I understand your argument and do not find it offensive... then again I haven't been a teenager for 2 years so I can't say how I would have felt. Teenagers need to learn how to develop that part of the brain, however, and I think that behaving the way they do is part of it. I think that a little bit of teen rebellion may be healthy, especially at a younger age when they have the safety net of being able to come crying back to mom. My teenage rebellion came at age 19 and it nearly ******** up my entire life (or did, depending on how you look at it).Saverio C. Ah yes we can't comprehend! Back to the main issue that you fail to comprehend yourself. (guess you are over developed). You made the post to attack all the teenagers of where ever you posted it. You gave us a post with a condescending tone and told us that we can't understand. Not until we are older. You came in here and told us that we lacked brain power, that we cannot match you because we aren't old enough, and even if we had the brain development you did we still wouldn't match you. You have experience and too much of it. We have to wait till we are older to understand. Your post has a very strong condescending tone too it, and the theme isn't much better. Telling us basically that we can't act rationally. Your premise, theme, and tone are all insulting and worth of the best troll threads. The only problom is your target is one that the world doesn't care if you attack. You think because the older people in the ED and ATG will agree that you have some sort of impunity to antagonize us. You want my god damned angst and I'm not gonna disappoint. If I did I wouldn't be doing your post justice.
Sav, I hope you know it was for the kids who think they know better than all the adults telling them "no, it's not a good idea" -Formerly La Belle Isolde-
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 2:13 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 6:18 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2009 6:48 pm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|