When our son was 11 I was looking to restore order in his wardrobe. I labelled every drawer and shelf, put his clean and folded clothes on his bed each day and said it was his responsibility to place each item in his wardrobe where it belonged. As the weeks progressed, his underpants drawer diminished. His pyjamas were nonexistent. There was not a school shirt to be found. And there, under an old blanket in the back corner of his wardrobe, I found a massive pile of clothes, clean and dirty mixed together, once-folded T-shirts intermingled with now-creased shirts. A random wig from the dress-up box. An old taekwondo uniform. His preteen prefrontal cortex had decided that the best way to ensure order was to simply ignore the work that needed to be done and hide the mess, without any thought of the long-term consequences.
When I read about the government’s plan to make major cuts to the national disability insurance scheme via its “Securing the NDIS for future generations” bill, I was reminded of the mess in my son’s wardrobe. The difference is that policymakers should be very aware of the long-term consequences of their actions, that hiding something from view doesn’t make it go away. And their prefrontal cortexes, the part of the brain responsible for long-term planning and risk assessment, should be fully developed.
