Lukas Furlan loves hockey. And he loves to play with high-end gear. Last fall, when he was shopping for a hockey stick with his father, the two didn’t see eye to eye on the budget. Dan Furlan, a lawyer who grew up in a modest bungalow in Scarborough, thought $100 was generous. Lukas, age 14, however, had his sights set on a state-of-the-art Kevlar-wrapped carbon stick, for a distinctly immodest $300.
After some heated negotiating, the pair came to an agreement. Lukas could get the fancy stick. Mr. Furlan would put in $100. Lukas would work off the balance doing chores around the house.
This kind of arrangement is a great learning opportunity for a young teen, according to Alyson Schafer, a family psychotherapist, based in Toronto.
“Because of brain plasticity, the early teen years are a crucial time to learn financial lessons. The pathways in the frontal lobes are in the process of being rewired and parents can influence how new circuits form.”
Brain science has come a long way in the past decade. And parents and their children can benefit from the new and sophisticated understanding of brain physiology. American author Barbara Strauch, in her book The Primal Teen, says the volume of changes that take place in an adolescent’s brain rival that of a toddler. “At adolescence, a full-scale pruning of brain branches occurs. More than 50 per cent of neural connections are eliminated in certain areas.”
The pruning happens for a reason. The frontal lobes, which are the centre of impulse control, long-term planning and reasoning, are being pared down and rewired for adulthood. The parts of the brain that get used, that are active, become more effective; those that don’t get pruned.
While the rewiring is going on, there’s a detour. Decision-making is rerouted to the amygdala, an almond-shaped section associated with emotions. It’s this detour that’s responsible for the risk-taking behaviour associated with teens. Those risks, says Ms. Schafer, are a part of healthy brain development.
“Teens are astute at looking for risk and finding it; their brains are wired to do that. It’s not that they don’t assess things properly. They know more than they’re given credit for. Like a young bird who leaves the nest to fly, trying new things is their job at this stage.”
When it comes to money, it makes sense that teenagers have a hard time taking the long view. So the only way they can learn financial skills is by being given the opportunity to learn through real experience. It’s important, then, that parents resist the urge to control their kids’ financial lives. Risks, and the mistakes that come with them, are necessary – so long as parents hold their children accountable.
“A new buzz phrase in the counselling community is ‘failure is the new success,’ ” says Ms. Schafer. We know that teens who recover from failure are better poised to master their lives. They go further. But they can only recover if they're allowed to fail.
Back to 14-year-old Lukas. With his parents’ help, he’s learned all kinds of lessons about money. He knows that if he burns through his allowance by Thursday, he’s out of money for the weekend. Recently, after a couple of months of saving, he upgraded his own iPhone. He’s forging the right pathways – except in one arena, the hockey stick. Mr. Furlan, by his own admission, didn’t follow up on the payback deal he made with Lukas. A lost opportunity.
