To say that the next generation is primarily screwed in terms of resilience

Ha kids are clever, and not wanting to go to school is as old as time....or at least since education became compulsory! The difference is truancy was easy in my day (70s kid), you would be unlikely to out right refuse school as that would lead to a clip round the ear....

Wait until they enter the real world you won't be there holding their hand. They need an education of some sort and a job to support themselves. The nanny state is over.

Food gone up
Rent gone up
Mortgage gone up
Gas gone up
Electric gone up
Council tax gone up
Anything else you can think of gone up

Our young people are not prepared for what is going on now. They will have a rude awakening and they will blame you and their parents because they were children. Most children rebel against adults but it's you who they are blaming when they ain't got a pot to piss in. They can be who they want to be but they have to fund it.

Exactly

My dad left school with no GCSEs, got an apprentiship and ended up with a decent job in IT

One of my team who graduated a few years ago with a decent degree is stressing that not having a masters is holding him back in his career in IT and going by job adverts hes not wrong.

Was not the be all - I meant.

@TooOldForThisNonsense

I disagree

When I sat exams we had choices It was the be all and end all as it's touted now.

Teacher endlessly telling kids they need to pass or their life will be ruined. That's too much pressure on a teen. Their are always choices and teens should be told and given different options

We need good apprenticeships
Work based training
College
Jobs that you can progress in
Uni for the brightest.

Not the endless uni uni uni shit (which kids now realise can lead do huge dept and no golden job)

No wonder kids are anxious.

I’m actually wondering if a lot of these resilience issues in young people are down to the introvert/extrovert difference.

Extroverts will always be ‘people’ people, regardless of the opportunities offered by the digital age, and I’m not sure much has changed for them in terms of confidence and resilience.

However, I’m an introvert and when I was a teen and young adult I just had to really force myself to get out there and socialise as there was no alternative, which in turn gave me the confidence to eventually make my way in the world.

Nowadays introverts have every opportunity not to interact with the real world and real people if they would rather not. Boys have mostly gaming and girls have mostly TikTok etc. The lecturer in a PP stating that many students choose to remain in their rooms and do all their learning online is another example.

. . . but haven't mental health services always been diabolical? Pretty much none existent before the year 2000? There wasn't even a mental health service for children until 25 years ago. Young Minds didn't exist.
There is more mental health knowledge, acceptance and support than ever before in history. It doesn't seem to be enough to cope with the ever growing demand though.
Something is clearly going wrong for kids somewhere along the line.

I know a lot of older adults like this I’m afraid! Not just kids, but it’s easy to blame them.

That’s a good point and really were a ticking time bomb having a mental health service so poor that it’s causing problems down the line. That said I would say the idea of mental health support for children is still a newish thing. I don’t remember any talk of MH in the 90s. We had an extremely traumatic childhood event when my siblings and I were children and teens in the early 2000s and never received counselling. Wasn’t even mentioned. No mention of it causing in going issues. No ‘working with school’. I think home issues were home issues and never mentioned much in school so it depend entirely on your family circumstances as to what help was received.

An entire thread tearing apart the younger generation and a few posts commenting the boomer generation having responsibility for some of this has set you off?! 🤷🏻‍♀️
I am neither generation so no axe to grind.

You don't learn resilience from getting everything handed to you and by being told you're great all the time.

This really struck a chord with me. 7yo dd now has an ehcp that focuses on building her resilience to failure, altering the way she sees mistakes so they become learning opportunities instead of sticks to beat herself with. She's a perfectionist and very performance driven, currently being assessed for adhd with asd/ pda. We've had a couple of episodes of school avoidance. To meet and speak with her you'd think she was the most confident, able, sociable child you've ever met. Her anxieties are well hidden - while at school. It was only through sheer determination that we secured the ehcp for her and obtained agreement to assess her. Chances are that with the interventions we've secured, she'll build her resilience and become a well adjusted girl. But the key was early intervention.

Incidentally, our 13yo ds has never had any problems in this respect and is thriving - raised exactly the same way, different personality.

Could what we're seeing now be the outcome of a lack of early intervention and awareness/ mental health services for children? All the evidence seems to suggest that for children who are particularly anxious - for whatever reason, whether neurodevelopmental or environmental - early intervention to help them improve the skills they lack makes a huge difference to their long term chances of success.

The world and life is very different now to several decades ago. There are so many pressures and risks from increased and unrestricted access to technology in recent years, and then we had Covid. Children's mental health has not been adequately invested in. When you're in the system, it is long, opaque, convoluted and only the most determined and knowledgeable parents will succeed in their navigation.

How do we solve lack of resilience? Improved awareness of both the challenges young people face today, and the strategies that parents and schools can and should be employing to reset expectations. Investment in early intervention.

Wow you should be so proud.Really tough times.🙄You seem to be such a lovely representation of your generation. Youngsters have all that to contend with and far more.Shame as a generation you didn’t develop the ability to recognise and own your mistakes whilst having a bit of empathy for younger generations who do actually have it far worse.

So the “it’s all your fault, Boomers” line is getting an outing. 🙄

Yeah, terrible that generation. Living with the real threat of nuclear Armageddon, fighting wars, managing through recessions, creating great art, literature and music, driving technology forward, building a whole new world of communication and computing, going to the moon, developing better diagnostics, drugs and treatments, and so on. Losers!

I think "resilience" is becoming the most over used word in the English language at the moment.

I also think if people of any age are constantly bombarded with negativity, criticism, ever changing expectations and compkete environmental uncertainty in both senses, you're going to get a range of reactions.

Those without "resilience" may well turn inwards / become self absorbed and anxious - some of them may snap and take more direct action against themselves or others. It's all a form of self defence against an uncertain and constantly changing world IMHO.

No body likes it. Especially not the people constantly worrying because they KNOW they're being judged for lack of resilience but their natural response to trauma and difficulty isn't easy to control nor is there time or support for it.

No idea what the eventual outcome will be, but as it's not just young people I reckon the end of the world will be collective nervous breakdown and some days it feels as though we're well on the way.

“Palming off” no it’s called needing to be pay a mortgage and use childcare.

’I mean VAST numbers of young adults who cannot leave the house, come into a classroom, look someone in the eye, make a phone call, speak infront of the class (if they make it in), cry when pronouns are wrong (daily occurrence), take responsibility to revise/get a job/learn to drive.’

My kids are at university and can do all the above fine. But I would say they are probably less resilient than I was at their age. But I think that’s down to ‘me’ and their upbringing. I had the childhood from hell and was unhappy and did not have parents I could talk to. I have gone the opposite way and been somebody they can tell anything to and turn to in a crisis.

I had to deal with all shit on my own and it’s turned me into an adult that finds it impossible to ask for help. Which is unhealthy.

On balance I will take the lesser ‘resilience’ in my young adult kids if they know they have loving parents who have their back. I think it will come with time as they are only still 18 and 19 and doing well socially and academically at uni living away from home.

And re the 1 in 20 not working. I bet many are waiting for MH treatment. They will have been bumped off broken inadequate CAMHS with zero treatment into adult services where you can have multiple overdoses and still get nothing. Bet most would have preferred not be unwell during their teenage years and working. Maybe fix the atrocious MH provision in this country rather than berate the young people who need to use it. Older generations who haven’t had to deal with the current pressures instead enjoying a very pampered time in history berating youngsters who are having to navigate an utterly shite time won’t help improve anything

having to play with random kids

So to be clear children are simultaneously less resilient because they are no longer spending all hours outside their homes playing with other children and because they are spending too long outside their homes playing with other children

1 in 4 people are disabled so 1 in 20 20 something's being off work isn't that much of a shock.

“None of this palming off your kids into nurseries to be looked after by random carers and having to play with random kids.”

What ridiculous rhetoric, what do you expect parents to do?

Saying people lack resilience isn't necessarily victim blaming.
The lack of resilience is absolutely the fault of the society that we currently live in.
Overall we do not support our young people to develop the coping strategies needed to deal with many of life's uncomfortable situations. Some can be avoided but many can not and those that have the coping strategies to get through difficult situations tend to do far better than those that do not.
Sadly many adults now do all they can to protect and shield young people from uncomfortable situations and this is amplified 10 fold by social media, influences etc.
We have gone from one extreme of 'stiff upper lip' 'just get on with it' to the other 'of you don't like it, you don't have to do it' there has to be a middle ground.
It's complex though as other PP have said this is the result of many things. Parents with less time, stretched school systems, huge exposure and access to social media to name a few

depressing but predictable that teachers/school staff are talking about
"pandering" to anxiety. When I worked in a school as a counsellor, I regularly came
across cold, obstructive teachers.
They didn't understand mental
health and saw behaviour as deliberate acting out, something to be smacked down hard, rather than any attempt to figure it out. Behaviour is
communication.
Zero positive reinforcement. Just behaviour points, detentions, lack of support,
lack of resources and blaming parents, even when their child was clearly and obviously autistic and diagnosed. On a number of occasions, including a time when I was waiting in reception for an interview, I've heard teachers talking disparagingly about students. Some teachers seemed to enjoy the power imbalance of being in charge of young students.
I still work as a counsellor but not in schools.
Never again.
Also, as someone who now specialises in working with neurodiversity, I've lots count of the number of clearly and obviously autistic students who have struggled to get evidence from schools because schools say they're fine and nothing wrong with them. I mean, you'd have to be totally fucking clueless to think that. These are very obviously autistic young people: limited eye contact and gesture, constant stimming, sensory sensitivity all over the place, social communication deficits which are clearly evident. But school say they're
ok.

It's not the first generation of both working parents at all. Non working wives was a very short term thing mostly in the 1950s/1960s.

Women worked throughout the industrial revolution in mills/factories etc. Woman used to work on the family farm or shop etc.

The difference is that their children were looked after by extended family as entire families lived close to each other and multi-generational living was the norm. So there'd always be an elderly relative living in the same house, or at least grandparents/aunties/uncles living on the same street to look after them and they'd play with their siblings or cousins in their own houses or on their own streets. Everything was familiar to them!

None of this palming off your kids into nurseries to be looked after by random carers and having to play with random kids.

Same with old folk - again, mostly lived with family at home and looked after by extended family who lived around them.

It's the fragmentation of families that has caused the problem. Kids are encouraged to go to Uni and many never return to their home town because of centralisation of "degree" level jobs in a handful of big cities, or they meet partners at Uni and go to live in their partner's home town. We've had the brain drain of workers having to move to a handful of cities because their local town/regional workplace has closed down and all staff relocated to London, or Birmingham, or Manchester etc - they've taken their families with them, otherwise they'd face unemployment if they lived in one of the many run down regions, seaside towns or ex mill towns which are now severely deprived.

Re the 1 in 20 20 somethings being off work. That is a shocking stat. I do think the work place is pressured in a way it wasn’t years ago, or maybe I’m biased based on where we’ve worked. Although dh and I have done a range of jobs both professional and ‘menial.’ The constant monitoring of performance creates such a pressure and unless you have very skilled management it feels like you are failing more often than succeeding. Having to account for your time every 6 to 10 minutes in some firms, giving a receiving constant feedback. Mistakes are often made a big deal of whilst praise is less forthcoming. The day can feel like a mental assault course. Shite pay comparatively to generations before as well. In low paid menial jobs it can be the same what with the collection of ‘data’ now that wasn’t available even a few years ago. The truth is that lots of 50/60 somethings who are now generally at the top probably wouldn’t have coped with that either. It was a less competitive world then and I wonder how many would actually succeeded now given the workplace is global. They’d never admit that though.

Same in my school. It’s one of the main reasons I am leaving this year. Children are endlessly asked how they are feeling and that they need to look after their mental health. Normal emotions are now anxiety and they are given various aids to apparently help them with their anxiety. Parents buy into all this and pander to it even more and so the cycle carries on. I am leaving because I can’t in all good conscience be part of it anymore. I have tried to voice my concerns that we are creating a generation who will not be able to cope in the outside world because the world is not fluffy and nice but it falls on deaf ears so I am leaving.