Delayed Development: 20-Somethings Blame the Brain

I guess for those of you parents out their that have twenty-somethings still living with you there is a biological reason why to why your child hasn't figured their life out yet.  According to this WSJ piece, brain development is still occurring in a person well beyond the age of 20. This means that they could still be trying to figure out what to do with their lives until their late 20's.

As one doctor puts it, "It pays to relax and not panic because your 21-year-old or even your 26-year-old doesn't know what he or she is going to do. Almost nobody still has that problem at 40 or 50. We all figure it out eventually."

Ask me in the 20 years what I think about this article if my own children are living at home still

• Recent research into how the brain develops suggests that people are better equipped to make major life decisions in their late 20s than earlier in the decade. The brain, once thought to be fully grown after puberty, is still evolving into its adult shape well into a person's third decade, pruning away unused connections and strengthening those that remain, scientists say.

• "It should be reassuring for parents to know that it's very typical in the 20s not to know what you're going to do and change your mind and seem very unstable in your life. It's the norm," says Jeffrey J. Arnett, a professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who coined the term "emerging adulthood" in 2000.
• The fact that the brain stays unfinished during early adulthood "is the best thing that ever happened to humans" because it allows us to adapt to changing environments, says Dr. Giedd. "We can figure out what kind of world we live in and what we need to be really good at."