It’s the brain chemistry

I am awed by some of the newer brain research that has been coming out in recent years, particularly as regards the developing child/adolescent brain.  Here are a few factoids of interest:

• The brain develops from back to front; that is, from critical life-sustaining functions in the brain stem (like breathing) to the more complex, problem-solving matters in the frontal lobe (perhaps calculus…personally, I never got there, but you get the point.)
• The limbic area (further back in the brain) is the home for our fight/flight/freeze response when we are afraid or angry—again, part of the life-protecting response to some perceived danger, I suppose.
• The frontal lobe (housed right behind the forehead) is also for decisions involving the word should, (as in, “no, I definitely should NOT take calculus”), and involves moral and ethical capabilities.
• And here’s the kicker—the frontal lobe does not fully develop in the human brain until the early to mid-twenties.

 Explains a lot, don’t it?

So when I read this from