Let’s take a moment to talk about the sex talk that was a rite of passage for so many of us. I’ll go first. 

Here is what I remember from my youth about that monumental moment: my mom dropped some 1950’s-era pamphlets on my bed. She suggested I read them. She added: feel free to ask questions. End of talk.

I did also receive school-based sex education at Creek Valley Elementary School, but it was not much better, delivered by a very young female teacher who gave the classic, cliched and very incomplete play-by-play.

“...and the man and the woman, who love each other very much, lie close together, very close together, and then they make a baby…”

This was the late 1970s and it really was that bad. You likely have your own comic variations on these sorts of awkward and inadequate conversations preparing you for this significant component of adult life. And I could spend this entire post riffing on all that is so very wrong with them. 

If that were the direction I was going to go with this post, I would start with the fact that those talks invariably, comically, bury the lead, or fully omit the lead—the head-exploding rush of euphoria, known affectionately in the adult world as the orgasm, that has kept our species propagating for millennia. I am no expert, but that part of the story at least deserves a footnote.

The sex talk aspect of parenting, though, is not my obsession. I am focused on education and the overall process of better supporting the mental development of our kids. As such, I will transition to the point of this post: As lame as those sex talks were, and still often are, at least there is a cultural tradition of actually having a formal discussion with kids.

Think back to the conversation you had with your parents about your mental development. You know the one about how our brains develop, and how that development shapes so much of your life, and the role school plays in that development, and your own role in the development, as so on. 

Are you thinking back? Anything coming to mind regarding such a conversation? Pamphlet? Anything?

In my own case, I know that there was no such sit-down. This is not surprising, as I grew up in the height of laissez faire parenting. My siblings and I were blessed with loving, supportive, self-sacrificing parents, but it was then still believed that cultural institutions, like schools and churches, would address the bulk of the work of developing our minds. 

At most, we had the occasional somewhat stern conversation suggesting I stop procrastinating on assignments or that I make some effort to get more consistently good grades, with me demonstrating an amazingly fixed mindset in response, assuring my parents that I was giving it my all (by which I meant, doing very little).

Times have changed. We now live in a time of far greater understanding of how our minds develop, thanks to advances in neuroscience, as well as a time of abundance of information, resources and tools for helping our kids develop their minds, many of which I have been writing about, and will continue to do so.

Related to these newer realities, and in the spirit of them, I think it makes sense to engage our kids in an ongoing conversation about this education and mental development process, believing it can go a long way to get the process off to a promising start. To that end, I am sharing the following outline of a recent Talk I had with my kids.

It starts with the unique nature of the human mind

One of the interesting things about life is that we enter the world without our mental wiring or software installed, unlike most of the rest of the animal kingdom. This installment process happens through parent input, experiences, school, reading, talking, observing, and so on. This continual process of learning and updating works to build the necessary neural pathways and connections which in turn shape how you perceive the world and your ability perform in it.

Building out your mind is a lifelong project 

You are going to spend your entire life installing, updating, and revising your personal operating system, just as we parents are still working on ours every day. Adults do kids a huge disservice if we make it seem like this process is something that only happens through school and up through your first 18 years, or first 20-some years with college and possibly graduate school. Given the speed at which technology changes our lives, adults have become increasingly aware of this reality and in response have coined the terms lifelong learning and lifelong learner to describe it.

Adults, including parents, are here to collaborate on your project

We adults also do a disservice to kids if we make you feel like your education is something you are doing for us. It is your mind, and thus very much your education. Parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults are here to help you with the project. There are a variety of reasons why kids need help, including getting them through periods when they think learning is pointless and annoying. When, for whatever reason, your mind is sending those signals, a good question to ask yourself is: would you really rather adults not help and just leave you alone, given the significance of the process?

School is just one of the your tools

School is part of the learning process, one that gets a lot of attention. You might even be tempted to think it is synonymous with education, but your mental development and the building of your brain is a result of everything you experience. One of the glories of the era you live in is the fact that you have ready access to nearly all the world’s knowledge and its most engaging and enriching content, all potential sources of mental development that lessen your reliance on traditional school and increase the chance you have a say in what you are learning and how your mind develops

Your amazing mental plasticity

There are plenty of reasons that there is so much focus on your education in the first 18 or more years of life, many of them obvious, but one that is a little less so is the amazing plasticity of your mind. You, as a young person, are currently blessed with a brain that is the world’s ultimate learning machine. The young human’s mind is the Thor’s hammer of learning—totally unstoppable. You will learn throughout life, but this is the period of maximum learning capacity—something adults, who spend much of our lives looking for our car keys, are envious of—which is why it makes sense to make the most of this phase of life, even if at times seems dumb and annoying.

Keep in mind future-you

Another reality of mental development is that the more you develop now, the further you can take your mental development in the future. The iPhone 14 is only able to have as many amazing features as it has because of how far the development team built into the iPhone 13, which was in turn only possible because of the innovations that were achieved for the iPhone 12. As a result, future-you-at-25 is hoping you you are curious and learning now, which future-you-at-35 will then take and run with for future-you-at-45, and so on. Your development is like a relay race of your various selves through time.

It is a thrilling adventure

This talk is just the introduction to this topic, one that we will come back to again and again, as there is so much more to say and learn about. But a good point to end on is this: let’s take a moment to appreciate how thrilling and epic this learning and mental building adventure is that your are on. Consider this: every single human-made thing in the world, and every human accomplishment, that you think is cool or amazing exists because of the learning journey that other kids were on and where they took it. This journey to develop your mind is one of near-infinite possibility and there is no telling how far you will go with it.

And that is it—my pass at a big picture talk for kids on the subject of learning, mental development, and their role in it. Will it have an impact or is this a crazy suggestion?

My kids were mostly into it, though they have also been hearing these concepts for a while. I was certainly glad to set aside some time to talk it through with them, formalizing in a way the quest that they are on, and officially sharing a perspective 56-year-old me wishes I had long ago.

Undoubtedly, it seems far-fetched or odd to some readers. For those, I will just point out that there is at least a chance that the adult version of your kids may cite this as the most life-changing conversation that they ever had with you. And besides, it can’t be worse than those sex talks, which set such an amazingly low bar for parent-kid conversations. We can do better.