Children are so unpredictable that sometimes you need numerical benchmarks to know what to expect. In this sense, identifying key ages allows us to know why they are acting this way at this precise moment, and how to react well. Having determined the age at which the child is most difficult, it’s time to find out the age at which he is most dangerous for himself. You might be surprised…
I’age has always been a key criterion to identify the milestones in child development. Over the years, specialists have thus sought to identify: the age when the child is the most disobedient, or even the age at which it is the most difficult for the parents to live.
During their parenthood, the education of the toddler is therefore one of the points that makes them the most worried. But maintaining his good health and the guarantee of security are also great sources of anxiety. Knowing the most dangerous age for the child to live could perhaps help them to be more vigilant and/or more considerate “at the right time”. But what is it?
We tend to think that it is during early childhood, when the child is still a baby, that the latter is the most dangerous and the most threatening for its own safety. Indeed, child specialists believe thathe is not aware of the danger until he is 9-10 years old ! Although the reasoning is logical, it is not entirely true.
British neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore tells us that the most dangerous age for the child is actually… 14 years old. In his book Inventing ourselves: the secret life of the teenage brain, she explains why. Hint: you have to look in the brain of your blond head…
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The brain of the child is slower at 14, especially in the analysis of danger
At the age of 14, the puberty of your offspring is in full swing. Besides the known physical effects (such as morphological changes), this phase also has a significant effect on the brain of the child concerned.
A study carried out in the 1980s, relayed by our colleagues from the New York Postshowed that the brain tasksand in particular those related to memory, are experiencing a 15% slowdown among 12-14 year olds, compared to 10-11 year olds. To reach this conclusion, the pre-adolescents observed were asked to identify the emotions released by a series of photo-portraits. In carrying out the exercise, the former were therefore slower than the latter.
Beyond this specific task, it is more generally the brain, in all spheres of life, which experiences a deceleration At this age ; This is evidenced by the school results which are much less satisfactory at 14 years of age. As a result, the latter are less quick to detect danger and analyze the risks they face.
According to the neuroscientist, this situation is probably due to the “significant changes in sex hormones, which trigger [eux-mêmes] changes in brain circuitry.”
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Peer social pressure is greater at this age and pushes them to adopt dangerous behaviors
It is during this age group of childhood (or pre-adolescence) that social peer pressure is more present. To be integrated and accepted by his group of friends, the young person will thus be more inclined to adopt some valued attitudes by these, even – and above all – when they present a danger. The purpose of these risky behaviors: impress them.
Thus, during an experiment carried out on the road, to which several groups of different ages were subjected, Blakemore demonstrated that adolescents aged 13 to 16 engaged in more dangerous driving than others. During this experiment, the individuals observed had to go as quickly as possible to a given point, while respecting the highway code. In addition to this observation, the neuroscientist also noted that these same adolescents had 2x more likely to run through traffic lights in the presence of their friends than when they were alone.
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14 years old: the age of unreason, where they learn the least from their punishments
Finally, at age 14, the neuroscientist says that children are “less likely to learn from punishment.” So when they put themselves in danger and you punish them so they don’t make the same mistake again, they won’t necessarily learn the lesson; quite the contrary! Rather, they risk repeating the same dangerous behavior over and over again.
In one study, two groups – one aged 12 to 17 and the other aged 18 to 32 – were asked to choose from symbols associated with either rewards or punishments. While both groups were equally good at spotting symbols related to rewards, teenagers, including 14-year-olds, did less well than others in identifying signs related to punishment…
In addition to not being aware of danger, not being fast enough to avoid it, or even provoking it just to impress his peers, the 14-year-old does not learn from his past mistakes. All these reasons together explain why this age is the most dangerous for him to live.
Open-minded and in love with life, Emilie likes to decipher the new phenomena that shape society and relationships today. Her passion for the human being motivates her to write…