Common sense would tell you as much, but over the past decade researchers have unearthed a neurological explanation. One experiment after another has demonstrated that children who live in poverty often have higher-than-normal levels of stress hormones, which can actually warp the architecture of the brain in ways that make these children more vulnerable to anxiety and depression and more prone to poor decision-making, and thus more likely to remain poor and to raise kids who will themselves remain poor. Bringing up a child in the chaotic conditions of poverty must be something like building a skyscraper on quicksand. Instability begets instability begets instability.

Exactly. Bingo! Hello?

This is where all my children came from. This is what's sent me over the edge so many times, as I've watched them make terrible choices in spite of many other much more acceptable options.

This is why we refer to them as not being neuro-typical children.

This is why school is such a hassle, as are relationships, and future prospects.

Is this pronouncement the kiss of death? No, rather it is an explanation from which we can all start to change how we parent. The ways in which I brought Sarah up are not ways that'll work well in these cases.

If I'd disengaged with a normal brain-wired child it'd be mistakenly thought of as complicit agreement with their negative actions versus what it is in reality - a refusal to get into a pissing contest.

This article can be found here, I was reading it on my phone while waiting for an awards ceremony to start at the high school in which Allen was getting an award for his math class. He was battling me about it, severe anxiety making him not want to walk up on the stage, whining that it was his 'dumb kids math class' anyway.

He did walk and I did gush my support.

Leaving there, in the mile between the school and my house, we came up upon a car that had just smashed into a tree, dust still flying. In that split second I was unsure where the rest of my teenagers were, most had stayed at the school, several had ridden home with other teens. I pulled over and darted to an unrecognizable car, Sabrina with me, a card carrying CPR certified person. Martin and Chuy ready to help.

A totaled car, air bags deployed, the kid had on a seat belt, and was in right good shape, thank God. He'd veered off the road in a curve, my guess is that he might've been texting. He'd been in classes with Martin since 2nd grade.

I was pretty shook up, being a mama, likely more so than the kid who was pulled out carefully from the back of the car window.  A First Responder was there within a minute, for a rural area, the response times are impressive.  I left so as not to be in the way.

"What's this?" Jack barked at Nando, "Is our room a Wildlife Sanctuary?" Nando'd found a baby bird with a messed up wing he was nursing back to health, several lizards were running amuck, plus he'd been hanging out his window fascinated with a black snake snoozing in the sun. I don't mind that harmless snake, I wouldn't go cuddle with it, but it does eat field mice which I don't want inside the house.

I've always thought that resiliency and a high intelligence is/was what pulled some of my kids ahead of the pack, and maybe that is still the case. maybe their intelligence and inner strength literally prevented their brains from being mis-wired? Is that even possible? Maybe their over-riding sense of what should be, their logic protected them?

The article itself was more narrative and less informational, but it so vividly portrayed the people so much so that I could see several of my own grown children living just like that, the lack of planning or any well thought out intentions, these aspects that drive us stick-in-the-mud parents nuts. We plan, we budget, we choose carefully, always considering the consequences, and we're baffled when others do not do so.

Well Cindy, they can't. They just can't.

They must be parented differently. Dr. Mandy has long known this, has guided me differently over the years, for awhile I resisted comprehending that folks couldn't choose better. It just didn't make sense to me. I couldn't understand why folks would willingly crap up their lives when a better decision would have a better result.

I just didn't understand.

Teachers don't necessarily understand either, thus the high dropout rate, which isn't the teacher's fault, I'm not trying to say that, but it's the frustration from the children who just can't think properly.

I do believe that some new pathways can be built within the brain. I have to believe that. The alternative is way too depressing. My expectations are now so much different than 25 years ago when I began, even then with slightly lower expectations so as not to stress new children out. My expectations nowadays are minimal.