Excerpt from A Mind At A Time by Dr. Mel Levine, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Contemporary culture values visual appearance, perhaps too much. Lots of students become preoccupied with their bodies and their physical appearance. As one father noted, "I can't believe it, my eleven-year-old son spends what seem like hours in the morning inspecting himself in the mirror and making all sorts of minor adjustments to his appearance, like making sure his dirty blue jeans and torn T-shirt look just right. I wish he'd expend that much time and energy on his homework."

Lifestyle issues also arise when a child becomes overly programmed. Schools that are highly and tightly structured so that there is little time for original thinking can short-circuit brainstorming in students. This is especially the case when a child is also heavily laden with scheduled activities after school and on weekends. One girl complained to me, "I have no free time at all. It's as if I'm in the army. Every day, I have to report somewhere at some time to do something I'm not sure I want to do or need to do. I keep wishing I had nothing to do." I think having nothing to do is plenty to do. I always admire kids who can entertain themselves for hours on end; that is an important strength, often the forerunner of creativity and resourcefulness.

Millions of teenagers have jobs after school, often for more than twenty hours a week. Frequently, these jobs entail little or no mind work. A cashier at a supermarket uses a scanner to do the math work and has only repetitious, rather undemanding verbal exchanges (e.g., "Paper or plastic?") for hours on end. A working student may be more likely to give homework short shrift and find school an irritant if he is trying to make money and save up for a car. It looks as if these kids should be working somewhat less than twenty hours a week if that's economically feasible.

Adolescence is also the time when kids are most prone to the effects of drugs and alcohol, both of which can have negative effects on brain growth and development. Teenagers need to be made aware of such risky addictions.

Clearly, there are plenty of kids who grow up in our contemporary culture with all its potential sidetracks and hidden traps yet thrive in school and go on to develop great kinds of minds. On the other hand, I have met so many others with subtle or not so subtle learning difficulties whose weaknesses have been further weakened as a direct result of some negative lifestyle forces such as the ones I have enumerated. In some instances students who have been frustrated in school seek refuge in intellectually void pursuits as they try to escape from the pain of their educational wounds. In all likelihood, television, visual-motor ecstasy, a strong interest in appearance, as well as the other distractions I have mentioned, are pretty benign until they start to occupy too much of a kid's time and focus, to the exclusion of essential mind-cultivating experience. That means that as parents you have an obligation to keep things in check, to gauge whether a cultural phenomenon is somehow out of control and then to make the critical adjustments. Contemporary lifestyles are desirable in moderation.

Splitting Rather Than Lumping

I've noticed that the people who study or work with kids can be divided into lumpers and splitters. I must confess to being a splitter, quite possibly a terminal case. That is to say, I am steadfastly unwilling to lump children into categories and then assume that all members of each category are pretty much alike. To the contrary, to me kids have more differences than resemblances. In fact, every time I meet a child in my office, I encounter some phenomenon that I have never seen before in any other child. Each kid unrolls an original mural of mind traits. The challenge is to understand his or her special wiring and its implications for parenting, counseling, and educating.

Copyright © 2002 by Mel Levine