what I meant to write about yesterday

So yesterday I rambled on about road trips and how they are a neat little metaphor for life. It wasn't actually what I intended to write about but it was what came from my fingers. I intended to write about bullying, to be specific school yard bullying.

The thing about bullying is that sometimes there is a fine line between thoughtless immature behaviour and outright bullying. It's easy enough to tell the difference most times. That lout who demands other kids' lunch and or lunch money each day and the kids give it to him because they are afraid of him, that's bullying. The kid who shoves another kid's head down a toilet and flushes and think it's funny, that's bullying. Obviously the kids who terrorise emotionally and physically are bullies.

The reasons behind the bullying will be as varied as the multicoloured M&M's stolen from some kids treat box. The end result will be the same - a terrified kid who starts having multiple sick days or becomes very silent, or goes to school and then sneaks out and hides somewhere until the end of the day and until the school notifies his parents.

But sometimes what is picked up as bullying, what is experienced by the child as bullying, is not actually the intention of the child doing it. Sometimes it is just plain immature foolish behaviour with no thought for consequences. I'm not speaking from the perspective of the parent of such a child here, but as the parent of a child who started having multiple sick days. Eventually it came out that one of his friends was taking friendly rough-housing too far. His friend didn't realise he was being too rough, too mean in his choice of words. And my child, as a friend, was horribly conflicted about what to do.

So the school has stepped in and I don't know how it will go. How do you explain to an only just teen that he is being too impulsive, too immature, too thoughtless. How does a child of that age even process this. The brain goes through one of the fastest and most complex stages of growth in the early teen years. The other time is as a toddler. So there are synapses developing and misfiring, information not being processed correctly or going missing entirely. Decision making is one of the brain processes that is not refined properly until the late teen years. Also, errors in judgement are frequently not noticed. Right at the time in their school life that such skills are pretty useful.

This is why teens can be so irritating and annoying. They actually don't notice their errors in judgement, they take forever to make a decision and when they do it's probably not going to be the right one. They get easily distracted by pleasurable activities - like playing a game on the internet instead of researching for an assignment. Impulsive behaviour is also a result of this rapidly growing brain, teens have difficulty controlling impulses. While they know there will be consequences the impulse and the desire for immediate gratification often over-rides common sense. Like my child spending his pocket money on food and then bemoaning that he can't afford whatever electrical do-dad has become a vital necessity to his life. Every week.

Each child is different, each level of maturity comes at a different age for each child. Some teens cope better with this rapid brain growth than others, who knows why - maybe some brains grow in a more disciplined way and some simply explode with synapses. For that matter, why do some people always have difficulty controlling impulses, and understanding the principle of delayed gratification. I'm not an expert by any means, I don't know why this is or how these particular brains differ from others that are organised and exhibit very little impulsive behaviour.

It is one of those mysteries of life that I like to ponder - because I am a little strange and I lack the education to expound - that the basic model of the brain appears the same in all owners. Yet such different skill sets, such different thought processes, such a varied range of ideas and abilities and knowledge occur in each and every person on the earth. We are all totally unique, nobody else in the world thinks quite like I do, or you, or the person sitting beside you. Nobody else on earth sees the world quite the same as you do; if you were not here that particular perspective would not exist.

Which brings me to a point I had no idea I was going to raise. We are all in our own way special and unique to the world, and at the same time we are all part of the whole. We make a complicated and dazzling hotchpotch of thoughts, ideas, personalities, bodies and souls. Each and every person on this planet is here for a reason and each and every person on this planet is connected. In fact, we all come originally from stardust, literally. We are all part of the whole and yet we hurt, maim, kill each other. It's absurd when you realise that to hurt another is to hurt yourself.

So I guess here's to celebrating our teens in all their irritating weirdness and crazy impulsiveness and annoying thought processes. May the foolish impulsive behaviour be moderated soon - I expect the threat of lunch time detentions will get some of those synapses firing in the right way. Another thing about teens is that they react well to big incentives, either positive or negative. But don't even get me started on waking them in the morning.