ways. Physical coordination – as any
soccer parent will tell you – suddenly
gels. “If we could maintain our body
functions as they are at age ten,” said
Leonid Gavrilov, a research scien-
tist at the University of Chicago, “we
could expect to live about 5000 years
on average.” Growth actually slows
for a year or two, but only on the out-
side. The real show is happening in
the brain.
At age ten, kids graduate from being
biologists, searching for a theory of
life, to being philosophers, grappling
with the truth that no one escapes
death. The surge in bandwidth helps
ten year old kids reconcile what they
think with how they feel.
At age ten, a kid may sudden-
ly become the family’s truth teller.
“You guys are boring,” said our eld-
est daughter, casually eviscerating
her mother at dinner after being told
not to read her Harry Potter book at
the table. “Dad just talks about sport.
And you just talk about problems at
work. And Mum, your new glasses
are kinda ugly. Just saying.” Her voice
was chillingly without affect. “And
I’m not sure about the hair.”
But then, almost in the next breath,
this girl was as sensitive as a sand-
papered fingertip. Not to our feelings,
particularly, but to the idea that the
world was full of people who were
not her and who felt differently – the
beginning of empathy.
At around age ten also comes
the birth of taste. (Take a memo,
parents: expose your kid to more
beauty and less tripe, for what they
learn to like right now will register
forever.) At ten, the lights come on
full beam, revealing the road ahead.
Professional athletes choose their
sport. Lifelong affiliations solidi-
fy. A worldview – the beginning of
political affiliation – forms. Cornell
University psychologists found that
a commitment to environmental-
ism often traces directly back to the10 yrs
20 yrs
30 yrs
40 yrs
PHOTO COMPOSITE: SHUTTERSTOCK132 march 2020
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