Growing up quickly

View Krasnoyarsk in a larger map

A recent post from TRS made me think about how normally we excuse teenagers from their immature behavior by stating that they are, in fact, immature and have underdeveloped frontal cortices. (Most people perhaps don't phrase it this way, but the two statements are in fact congruent. Just like saying "he is not bar-mitzva yet" and "his body has not started its testosterone production fully".)

And yet we find stories of teenagers acting in a very responsible manner (oftentimes much more responsibly than many adults) when suddenly faced with responsibilities. The stories that come to my mind (because of my background) are of children during WWII. Somehow being left in blockaded Leningrad (where a few thousand people are dying every day from cold and starvation and cannibalism is prevalent) makes one grow up very quickly.

Actually, my mother has recently befriended a young Russian couple. The husband's grandmother was 15 or 16 when the war started. Her father died in battle. So did her mother (the Soviets were very egalitarian those days). She had a younger sister and a younger brother. When the shelling of Moscow by Nazis started, she picked her siblings up and left. Where did she go? Well, she remembered that she had some relatives in Krasnoyarsk, so she went there, by foot. In the middle of winter. Where, you ask, is Krasnoyarsk? Well, just a bit north of Mongolia. The distance is about equivalent to that between Mexico City and Alaska (see the map above). Again, I repeat, in winter. Traveling on the roads so bad that German tanks had trouble getting through them (and this was on the European side of Russia; she had to go through the Asian side).

Not to mention all the 16-year-olds who fought in the army against Nazis. And the 15-year-olds who forged their dates of birth so that they could join.

Now, these are not stories of exceptional heroism. Such acts were commonplace. People did what they had to do. And not just in shelled Moscow. In shelled London too. In shelled Warsaw. In concentration camps. Each culture equivalent to its needs and its people's strength of character. Children nowadays are doing the same things in Africa, in India, in China, in the US South, when they have to.

So, I wonder: do their prefrontal cortices speed up in development? Or do they just do the right thing, not making excuses of maturity and anatomy?

Also (and this is really an old question of mine for those who are keeping track), what should the modern parents do? Surely we should not wish upon our children to encounter difficulties in life (the life will take care of that by itself). But certainly living in a golden bubble also has its averse affects.