
Out of Sync: Puberty at age 9 - ghurlman
http://goodmenproject.com/2010/06/02/out-of-sync/
======
btilly
Why are people upset at the article?

I look at it and I see a boy who had a medical disorder, but managed to grow
up, is finishing college at 19, has developed useful skills, and has developed
good decision making skills. Along the way there were some emotional problems
and unfortunate incidents. But guess what, nobody learns to make good
decisions without making some bad ones along the way.

Furthermore everything I know about parenting says that the people who would
have tried laying down the law from day one would have been extremely likely
to end up with lots more conflict and a worse outcome. Admittedly I'm far from
an expert, but as a parent I consider it my duty to read and think enough to
have a reasonably well informed opinion.

(I'm curious how many of the people who are offering blanket advice are
parents. As one friend told me, "It is amazing how much more I knew about
being a parent before I had kids.")

~~~
petercooper
Since I came out and flatly said I see this as a serious case of a lack of
good parenting, I'll satisfy your curiosity one step: I'm a parent.

 _Furthermore everything I know about parenting says that the people who would
have tried laying down the law from day one would have been extremely likely
to end up with lots more conflict and a worse outcome._

There is a _wide_ gamut of parenting behavior between "laying down the law"
and just letting your kid do whatever they like without any monitoring or
guidance. Neither approach is good - you need to work out a middle way that
gives your child a wide scope for autonomy but with defined boundaries that
allow you to notice and correct/repair/talk about unreasonable behavior.

Letting a 9 year old have unfettered access to hardcore porn and late night
text room conversations is severely towards one end of that gamut.

~~~
btilly
_Letting a 9 year old have unfettered access to hardcore porn and late night
text room conversations is severely towards one end of that gamut._

If you think that he was granted that access at 9, or that he was granted
access lightly, you didn't read the story very carefully. Go back and search
for the comment near the end from Alex' father for some more context.

Now refresh your mind as to the effects of testosterone. It is the chemical
that makes previously complacent boys seek out sexual behavior, assert their
own identity, challenge authority, and attempt to establish themselves higher
in whatever dominance hierarchies they find themselves in.

Sure, chronologically he might have been 11. But biologically he was more like
16. With all the conflicts and behaviors that go with that. (How many of us
would like to be reminded of the stupid things we did at 16? I sure
wouldn't...) How big a set of fights do you want? Because his brain chemistry
is prepping him to give them to you.

My attitude is that childhood is where we do our best to lay a foundation.
Puberty is where we have to cross our fingers and hope that we did a good
enough job. And adulthood is where we hope to find validation that we did OK.

I don't expect to face those challenges that young or that severely with my
children. But in this case their son's accelerated pace has already got him to
adulthood. And the results seem pretty good. It seems likely that my standard
for parenting is different than yours. But by my standards if the kid winds up
capable, high functioning, healthy, and thankful for his parents, then you
succeeded.

~~~
jimbokun
"My attitude is that childhood is where we do our best to lay a foundation.
Puberty is where we have to cross our fingers and hope that we did a good
enough job."

That is precisely the problem with early puberty. You lose multiple years of
the childhood necessary to lay the foundation for the onset of puberty.

------
Confusion
This is just your regular puberty story, displaced a few years. I fail to
understand the alarmist responses of the medical professionals. Why would they
worry about pregnancy with someone age 9, but not age 11? The parents seem to
suffer from a 'we are so special; our problems were so different' syndrome.
Why would allowing someone aged 11 to watch porn be a larger issue than
allowing your child aged 14 to watch porn? Since when is a child hitting his
dad at 15 different from one hitting his dad at 17?

~~~
paulnelligan
The worst thing about it is that they wanted to put him on severe medication
with nasty side effects, some of which they can't even quantify. A lesser
parent would have gone for that without consulting their child. The arrogance
of the medical profession to just 'throw drugs at the problem' astounds me.

As for the 'we're so different' aspect of it, I disagree with you there. It
does seem to present a major challenge, and it's a personal story, very well
written, and one which I for one really enjoyed reading.

~~~
sethg
The nasty side effects of the drug have to be weighed against the nasty side
effects of the condition that the drug is meant to treat, and from the
article, the parents didn’t do that. The kid hated needles and didn’t want his
balls to shrink (when oversized testicles was _one of the symptoms of his
condition_ ) and that was the end of it.

I’m sure that lots of people with juvenile diabetes, when they were first
diagnosed, hated the idea of injecting themselves with insulin every day, but
they learned to cope. This child could have learned to cope.

 _ETA:_ According to a comment by the father toward the end, the
endocrinologist agreed with the decision not to give drugs.

~~~
paulnelligan
So, if he agreed with the decision not to give the drugs, why were they
recommended in the first place?

Also, I don't think regulating someone's blood/sugar levels can be equated to
altering the course of their puberty and shrinking their testicles. The damage
could be untold and irreversible.

I don't share your faith in the medical system, and it's infallability
(although many do a great job under difficult circumstances), and I'm
definitely not alone there. Many respected cellular biologists are claiming
that the medical profession has got it wrong in relation to treatment of many
conditions.

------
kragen
Poor Alex. For the rest of his life anyone who googles his history will be
reading about how he threatened his mother, attacked his father, and loved
hardcore porn at 12 years old.

~~~
MaysonL
Actually, no: the article doesn't currently show up until page 8 of a Google
search for alex peppe. I would imagine that in a couple of years it will be
even further down the search space.

~~~
CrazedGeek
The HN comments are on page 2, though.

~~~
davidw
It wouldn't surprise me if that dude found this discussion, actually.

------
sliverstorm
I'm a little confused. I haven't read the article word for word, so I may have
missed something but

The article paints it like the problems are because the boy has multiple times
normal levels of testosterone (not for his age, but for men at all), but I
didn't see any mention of tests or levels. So, if the testosterone levels were
a problem but didn't exceed natural levels (at any age), why were there
problems?

Yes, you could have problems with a child with high testosterone levels, but
the article also seems to be claiming everything else about the boy was
developing at the same rate- that is to say, while chronologically he was one
age, his body AND mind AND everything else were some other age, _but all the
same age_. Why would this be a problem? There's plenty of normal teenage boys
out there of equivalent biological age, and the number of candles on their
cake doesn't determine how unhinged they may be.

I've phrased all this poorly as I can't quite work out how to put it, and
maybe I've missed something, but I didn't find any evidence that he wasn't
anything other than just pretty much a regular boy with a somewhat accelerated
clock.

~~~
hartror
He had a rather highly accelerated pubescence which increased the alienation
that teenagers often feel from their peers. Combined with an emotional
immaturity (this you will note was is not accelerated as it is learnt rather
than grown) lead to some serious difficulties for him and his parents.

~~~
sliverstorm
Alienation I buy, but it seems unlikely it would be the most important factor.

Emotional maturity (or lack thereof) is what I'd normally attribute it to, but
I'm not quite sure how that develops. Is it truly purely a learned trait? If
so, I'd agree with you that would be the biggest stumbling block. I thought of
it myself, but discounted it.

~~~
hartror
Have a full read of the article, his actions bear all the hallmarks of
emotional immaturity combined with heightened hormone levels. And don't
discount alienation, we're social animals and puberty is where this need for
strong interaction with peers is initiated and grows to form our adult
emotional and social intelligence.

And no emotional maturity/intelligence isn't purely a learnt trait, rather
there parts of the brains that function to provide us with a place to learn
these behaviours which is why physiological disorders can affect it. There a
number of documented cases where a child has been deprived of social stimuli
(such as a case where a child was brought up living in with her parents dogs),
these children's brains are underdeveloped in the parts of the brain that deal
with social skills (and language).

A particularly horrific example of the argument of nature vs nurture.

~~~
sliverstorm
That's interesting to think about. The natural solution that first pops into
my mind is to teach them emotional maturity, or in other words 'make them grow
up', at an early age. Responsibility or 'rise to the challenge' type trauma.
(of course, it's really not something that can be easily 'taught' in a
structured way)

Today, that doesn't happen much, but centuries ago I'm sure it did, which
makes me wonder if people like David Farragut were humanity's Alexes of the
past.

~~~
hartror
Good point, though do you develop a well balanced individual that way?

------
jolie
This online mag is amazing. The writers are actually good essayists, and the
themes are more elevated that what you'd expect from a more typical "lad mag"
like Esquire.

------
petercooper
_Eric and I agreed that Internet pornography would allow Alex a sexual outlet
that was the safest of all the alternatives. [..] Looking back, I realize I
knew nothing about boys and pornography. I’d never seen online porn and
assumed that Alex was viewing still pictures similar to print magazines. It
wasn’t until Alex was 12 that we learned that he’d been downloading video
clips and visiting adult chat rooms._

This article lost its legitimacy when I discovered that this poor lad merely
suffered from a lack of good, disciplined parenting.

Not everyone turns into a secretive, manipulative sex addict a few years after
puberty whether it happens at 9, 11 or 13. Letting a 9 year old browse porn
and interact on "adult chat rooms" shows, to me, a lack of care that could
(did?) cause serious psychological trauma in someone so young.

~~~
itistoday
Having just finished the article, I have to strongly disagree with you, I
think they did a great job parenting.

Giving their son unrestricted access to pornography was a smart thing to do,
especially considering, as explained in the article, he could get it either
way.

If your child is smart and educated about the potential dangers associated
with online sex chatrooms and the like, there are only benefits to reap.

Pornography does the world a load of good. In countries that are sexually
liberal, and where sex is not as taboo as it is in other countries, the
population has less sexual crime. The opposite is true of sexually repressive
countries. Why this is so shouldn't be difficult to understand.

Pornography gives sexually charged males an outlet, one that does not involve
raping and abusing women.

What matters most with respect to porn, is not whether someone has access to
it, or even the sort of porn they watch, but their own character, which
determines how they react to it.

Or would you have preferred that they block his internet access (a futile
endeavor as explained in the article), made him resent and rebel against his
parents more, and forced him at the age of 9 to turn his sexual drive and
impulses toward the underage girls around him? Turning off the porn doesn't
turn off natural sexual urges, if anything, it ensures they're at the
forefront of his consciousness. Any honest person with a penis can tell you
that.

For a child in his position, he turned out remarkably well. This should not be
surprising considering the excellent parenting he received. They didn't give
up on him, they home-schooled him and taught him well, and they gave him
freedom to learn from his own mistakes:

 _Alex took the therapist at his word and walked out of the office to go live
with his girlfriend. He was 15. I reported the incident and the therapist to
the Department of Human Services and called the police, who monitored Alex
from the distance. Two-and-a-half difficult days passed before Alex returned
home, his body language meek and his words—to me, at least—repentant. He
barely spoke to his father._

Down the road, Alex realized how blessed he was to have such great parents:

 _A strict vegan, Alex had just apprised me of new research on latent
carcinogens in poultry as well as the news that he was to receive the award
for the university’s Outstanding Computer Science Student of 2010. Holding a
corn chip midway to his mouth, he said, “I appreciate all that you do for me.
I know I couldn’t have come this far without you.”_

~~~
petercooper
Thanks for the pro-pornography manifesto, but you're falsely assuming I'm
against it. Quite the opposite - I'm pro pornography and a fully paid up pro-
sex disciple of Dan Savage :-) No-one's ever going to be seriously injured by
seeing a few genitals.

I just don't think a NINE year old should be implicitly given _free rein_ to
browse hardcore pornography and to have sexual discussions in adult sex
chatrooms with strangers. Straight up softcore porn is no enemy, but it's easy
to go way beyond that. A 9 year old is emotionally and mentally streets away
from a teenager, whether they're hitting puberty or not.

I've tended to think of myself as a mostly liberal guy, but seriously, if
people think that letting 9 year olds check out pornography and talk on adult
chat rooms is OK (judging by all the upboats you're getting), then today is
the day I've finally become sexually conservative - at least compared to some
of you(!)

~~~
exit
i don't know. your argument feel intuitive, but itistoday has concrete
examples of why the situation was actually positive. that _"A 9 year old is
emotionally and mentally streets away from a teenager"_ is an abstract concern
to me - what exactly is the problem here? compounded by the fact that things
turned out fine for the kid in the story.

~~~
petercooper
People frequently have positive adulthoods after suffering abuse earlier in
life. That's mere correlation, not causation, and doesn't mean the abuse is
good.

People with pleasant childhoods can turn out bad. People with get beaten every
day as kids can turn out good. That's as much not an argument to beat children
as yours is to give them free access to adult, sexual situations.

~~~
philwelch
So are you arguing that the porn was unpleasant to him? Because if it wasn't
unpleasant to him at the time (like physical abuse would be), nor did it
hinder his development, then where is the harm?

------
DavidSJ
TL;DR: Hysterical parents and doctors freak out over son who is perfectly fine
and even abnormally intelligent, publicizing lots of incredibly personal
information in the process.

------
Wolf_Larsen
Well, it was more interesting than I expected.

------
melvin
A colleague of mine has a daughter who went into full-blown puberty at the age
of 7. Bodily changes, emotional lability - everything that usually happens at
13. The doctors recommended they cut out the use of plastics and household
cleaners... so, off to read the article.

------
joubert
At one point the mom says she asked him whether he wants to take the
medication ("it is his life"). I wonder whether she asked his permission to
publicize the intimate details of his growing up.

~~~
kiba
If you have read the comments, than you would have realize that her son was
looking over at the whole things and deciding what to include and not to
include.

------
watmough
Terrifying. But it doesn't sound that far removed from any other mal-adjusted
kid who was obsessed with computers and porn.

I'd forgotten how miserable puberty was. Ahhhh kill me now.

------
eapen
I just got done reading this article and don't blame the parents at all. It is
always easier to criticize another parent's decisions but you are in their
shoes, the whole perspective is different and you will end up doing whatever
you think is best for your kid.

btw. This is his website. <http://www.alexanderpeppe.com/>

------
Tichy
Huh? Seems to me not testosterone, but hysterical parents are the problem
here. Quote from the doctor: "He can get a girl pregnant. He will not hesitate
if given the opportunity." WTF??? What a bunch of nonsense.

~~~
btilly
On what data are you basing your opinion?

The doctor accurately describes what testosterone does to boys. Once a boy
starts producing testosterone in large amounts he matures sexually, becomes
capable of getting women pregnant, and develops a strong interest in doing so.
The result is called puberty.

This is as true at 9 as it is at 16. It is much rarer for boys to start
producing testosterone at 9, but if it happens, the results are perfectly
predictable. (Ditto for girls. There is no known lower age limit at which the
body responds to sex hormones. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Medina>
for an extreme example.)

~~~
Tichy
But even with Testosterone, boys don't try to impregnate every girl they are
alone with. Maybe they'd want to, but they are not completely brainless.

~~~
btilly
This boy had higher than normal levels of testosterone, and was facing it with
unusually little maturity due to his young age. Both factors bode poorly for
self-control.

------
danbmil99
opposite of my family: 3 boys, puberty at 16, 17, and 18 (almost 19). That
last one they were about to inject with all sorts of ugly drugs, when ole
puberty came shuffling in late but otherwise normal

------
ams6110
Parenting is a tough job, especially with your first child when you have no
experience to fall back on. But OMG do I think they made a bunch of bad
decisions with this kid.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, the parents asked the child's permission too frequently rather than
simply taking control.

I don't ask my dog permission when I take him outside, but I see many owners
that do and they have dogs that quite frankly I would be scared to let small
children be near. And I truly believe the same principles apply to children as
animals, the nature of the relationship is vastly more complex but authority
isn't. You're the boss or you aren't.

These parents were not the bosses of the household, Alex was. My father was
the boss, it was an undebatable fact and I experienced very little drama in my
childhood. I never got grounded, and I rarely got disciplined because if I
ever did something wrong I simply had to be told not to do it again.

~~~
pyre
> _I don't ask my dog permission when I take him outside,_

I hope that you don't feel the dog-to-child comparison is 100% accurate.
Running your house like a pack of dogs (or frankly a boot camp) might not be
the best way to raise children. You don't want to raise children that: 1)
can't think for their own b/c they only know how to memorize/regurgitate or 2)
will instantly rebel and 'go wild' when control is released (i.e.
university/college).

> _My father was the boss, it was an undebatable fact and I experienced very
> little drama in my childhood. I never got grounded, and I rarely got
> disciplined because if I ever did something wrong I simply had to be told
> not to do it again._

This evidence is just as anecdotal as the people that say, "My computer runs
Windows and I've never seen a BSOD so therefore anyone that experiences a BSOD
must have been asking for it." Also, read the comment (currently) above this
thread that refers to further information that was cut from the final draft of
the article at Alex's request. It adds more context to the story.

On the other hand, there is _some_ evidence for having a strong father figure.
e.g. Ted Nugent has stated that it was his up-bringing that kept him out of
drugs and alcohol even while hanging out with notorious drug users like Jimi
Hendrix. (Though many people might not see the 'Motor City Madman' as a role
model to aspire too; I don't share a lot of his views on politics, etc)

~~~
electromagnetic
I said, I believe the principles apply, it's not 100% accurate because humans
are infinitely more complex than even the smartest breeds of dog. However the
principles do apply.

I believe in authority not in a disciplinarian as the head of the household.
I've seen parents who are simply discipline 110% of the day, and you don't
necessarily just get #1/#2 that you pointed out, you too frequently get #3
which is balls-out-psycho-shit teenage runaways and daily physical
altercations. Incidentally, this is seen in dogs and especially in the
obedient breeds who can be consistently disciplined and obey.

I don't mean treat our children like they are dogs, but treat them evenly,
fairly and consistently like you would your dog. The parents in the article
_never_ acted consistently, they fully knew what behaviours they wanted out of
their son but never showed the consistency in their efforts to control it. (I
understand there was more in the story about him accessing pornography,
however there's ways to relent on a situation without essentially saying 'fuck
it, do whatever you want', they could have bought him a playboy subscription
either magazine or TV rather than give him free access to the billion
different fetishes available online that - allegedly - manage to screw up the
marital lives of mature adults)

I mean I lost all respect for these people when they not only flat out gave up
on stopping their son trying to date a homeless woman, but aided their son in
doing so by moving her into their house, buying her clothes and trying to help
her. (It might sound like a noble act, but they essentially bought a homeless
woman as a prostitute for their 15 year old son)

It's simply ludicrous why these adults thought this was an appropriate thing
for them to be doing. They gave their son free access to pornography _and_
essentially bought him a prostitute. It's a miracle they haven't been charged
with aiding and abetting child abuse by repeatedly allowing a legally
responsible adult to have sex with their under-age child.

~~~
pyre
If you read the father's comments on the article, the courts _were_ involved
with trying to separate their son from the homeless lady, but apparently not
even that was enough to stop it.

