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

There was a thread here the other day about how we mustn't ask kids if they went away on holidays because it might be hurtful to those who hadn't.

That kind of thinking kills resilience.

One of the major things that needs to happen for kids to gain it is they need to come up against hard things, hurtful things, sometimes scary things, and see that they can get through them. That is how they learn that it is possible to survive, and how they learn to put things in perspective - the difference between something not nice, and something actually harmful.

The other element IMO is the lack of time away from adults and unstructured play with other kids.

At the teen stage phones do have an effect. Not just due to SM, but because they are always tethered. When you have a phone you can always call or text for help from mum or someone else. It means they never find out they can actually dig deep and solve problems themselves.

Parents and teachers too don't seem to realize that letting kids off when stuff is scary actually makes a lot of anxieties and fears worse in the long term.

I think that many younger people have no understanding of recent history. I have read this whole thread and have seen many times people claiming that younger people face challenges that older people did not face, when this is simply not true.

When I was young in the early eighties, the place I lived and other places around the country were decimated by Thatcher's policies. Watch Billy Elliott to get an idea of back then. Adults on the TV were talking about how many in my generation would never manage to get a job and would always be unemployed. I remember a 16 year old classmate coming into school elated telling us he had managed to get a job in a factory. Unemployment was high.

You could easily argue that none of us should have worked at school as we would have had no motivation to do so. And some did no work. But many did. And over time things got better. Where I grew up is unrecognisable and low paid employment is fairly easy to get.

Workplaces used to be far harsher places for working class young women. Sexism, page 3 girls stuck up in offices, sexual harassment, "banter" etc still existed although it was being challenged and gradually faded out. And we were expected to work very hard. There was no minimum wage. I was paid much less in real terms than the minimum wage now. If you worked part time you often could not join the company pension scheme and plenty of smaller companies had no company pension scheme.

And there was no legal protection if you were LGBT. You could be fired for being gay openly and there was nothing you could do. Gay bashing was rife.

The one thing that was better was that accommodation was cheaper. But it is the middle class who changed that with buy to let mortgages and holiday lets. So yes get angry at all the small landlords, they have made your life harder. But the idea that everything else was easier just is not true.

We are at the end of many years of the Conservatives ruling. Things are always shit when Conservatives have been in power for a long time. And that also has an impact on young people. There have been massive cuts in under fives provision and youth provision. Their fiscal irresponsibility has made life harder for most of us. And as a result families are more stressed.

But the biggest change is smartphones and social media. I am horrified at the primary school teacher on this thread who said her pupils are spending 4 plus hours a day on the internet. We need face to face interaction. We are not evolved to operate in this way.

I don't see the term resilience as a convenient, unintelligent way to blame people.

I see resilience as a kit for coping with what the world throws at you. People with resilience will still feel the anxiety, worry and fear - but they will have positive coping strategies and an inner dialogue which helps them rationalise situations, seek solutions rather than only seeing problems. It's positive and empowering.
If you're resilient you still experience the same situations as everyone else, you just have personal inner strength to help you cope with it.

Resilience is nurtured and learnt. It's survival.

There just seem to be fewer secondary age pupils that have these coping strategies. I still think EYFS and primary pressure for targets and SATS has induced anxiety in many (not all) children too young when the coping strategies haven't yet been developed. Too much, too soon.

I also think this weaponisation of the word ‘resilience’ is a convenient unintelligent way of blaming people (here young people) for the issues in society rather than looking at the society/ environment we have placed our young people in.

The concept of resilience is used to victim blame and psychologically bash people about. It’s a passive aggressive tactic/weapon used to person blame.

I’d counsel OP to think through her use of the word and think a little more deeply about WHY the young people in her care are struggling so much.

My gen z graduates at work are frigging fantastic tbf so I don't recognise many of these stereotypes either

But then going by some posters complaints of anyone between the age of about 5 to their mid 30s I think some posters dont even know which generation they are moaning about anyway, just the younger ones

I am still waiting for all the serial killers or whatever it was video games were supposed to turn us all into though

Me and my friend were talking about this the other day. We were both neglected when we were young, in different ways but legit both experienced real abuse. My friend is successful in traditional sense, brilliant job etc, and I am in my own way. We agreed that because of this neglect we developed resilience and we’ve both overcome things which other people couldn’t even begin to understand how. Now that’s not to say everyone who experiences neglect is resilient, or that everyone should be neglected to develop resilience. Far from it. What we both came to realise that if we didn’t have quality professional support in our lives when we were growing up in those formative adolescent years, we wouldn’t be in the places we find ourselves today.

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at is that it doesn’t matter whether these kids have got resilience or not, they’re clearly not doing well and there needs to be proper investment in professionals who are trained properly and remunerated fairly for the important work they need to do with these kids. Because it’s so important they get quality support so these don’t become long standing problems stretching into adulthood.

And at the left of the political spectrum, the social cachet translates directly into political power. I used to be in the Greens and watched the Disabled group become overrun with people who self-identified as ASD, just as the women’s group had become overrun with people who self-identified as non-men.

I actually think gen z are pretty cool. I don't think there's anywhere near as much angst and nihilistic tendency amongst them as the media likes to portray! My daughter is almost 14, and she's infinitely more savvy and grounded than I was at that age.
The idea that something is set to destroy our youth (for my gen it was satellite tv, computer games, video nasties and such like) is a tale as old as time.

I think this is a good point and demonstrates how overused the word ‘resilience’ is on here. What appeared to be resilience in previous generations (gen x and boomers) was just buried down emotions and came out later as trauma.

Alcoholism for example is rife amongst my peers and my parents peers. Stiff upper lip was the way forward.

Perhaps we weren’t more ‘resilient’. We just buried it down as children should be seen and not heard don’t you know.

I think the fact that children/teens today have the confidence/rights to say NO, to stand up for themselves and to say enough is enough is testament to the fact that they have more rights than ever before and I think this is triggering for many older people.

Turning up to be taught by a string of supply teachers who might be excellent teachers but simply don't know the kids, or be teaching the subject they trained in.

My son (14) is pretty resilient and happy but he's pretty ambivalent about school.

I wasn't talking about 20 year olds so Im not sure why you thought I was?

Apparently despite all those experiences of your parents they still couldnt bring up a child who could be polite to someone who has an opinion you disagree with

Perhaps you need a little resilience to help you with that?

Oh fuck off. My parents generation lived through the second world War. My dad fought in the middle east, my mum worked in the munitions factory and Liverpool like many cities was blitzed.
My uncle was a POW in Burma and was damaged for life.
We have produced a generation of 20 year olds who need trigger warnings for books.
We spent far too much time pandering to "mental health" of young people which is a gross insult to those poor sods who really do have mental health issues as opposed to being upset because someone used the wrong pronoun

This, exactly.

As the first lines of two brilliant Manic Street Preachers' songs so aptly say:

"The future teaches you to be alone
The present to be afraid and cold"
(If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next)

And:

"The gap that grows between our lives
The gap our parents never had"
(The Everlasting)

🤔😳😫

Sorry... couldn't resist! 😆

The daughter of my OH is 31. Wants to ‘be a photographer’… has no qualifications but she’s above average talent-wise.

She refuses to work in other jobs in order to pay the rent. Sofa surfs, stays with her Dad in his flat, and makes frequent requests for money. Which he gives her. EVERY TIME.

If he questions her too closely, she throws a massive strop and starts playing the MH card. He then backs off.

And repeat.

He’s paid for therapy for her countless times, paid for a very expensive careers coach. She plays him like a fiddle.

YANBU - my class have real issues with resilience be it with learning and growth mindset or with friendships.
They do not know how to even approach trying for themselves and seem to struggle to think of ways to start off by themselves.

I’m really worried for them when they start secondary school!

I think a lot does have to do with parental input (I know the feeling of burnout and never having any time and the weeks just overflowing).
But also I think all the social media and gaming has had a big impact as they’re used to immediate response from phones and consoles. Their concentration isn’t the same as previous cohorts years ago and they don’t want to search or think of answers themselves when they could expect or ask an adult every time.

Tbh, I think it is much easier to appear resilient if you feel your life is built on firm foundations. Life used to be a lot more black and white for most people - society was more homogenous and people were expected to be less self-centred and to look outside themselves for meaning and guidance - eg to a common God, or to a hierarchical society where respect, trust and deference were automatically due to those at the top and only lost in extremis, and where you were given a fairly clear idea of what your likely life path was. You went to school and you were taught a lot of “facts” about the way things were, about what was right and what was wrong, about what your place in the world was, about what the meaning of life was.

These days, it doesn’t feel like there are any firm foundations - we don’t trust the powers that be to guide us, we are told to respect all faiths and none, we are all expected to work out for ourselves “who we are” and what we think is right and then not offend anyone who has come to a different conclusion (unless anonymous on the internet).

To make sense of modern life, one must become entirely self-centred - nothing is more important than the self, but the self can be whatever you want it to be, with the only rule being everyone must accept what you say you are and how you say you feel, and nobody must guide you too forcefully to believe anything in particular. Add to that the unreal world of the internet, where black is white (red, grey or a badger) and white is black (or whatever else the hell someone says it is). How can you possibly build a clear sense of self and purpose from all the voices trying to drown each other out? Where are society's firm foundations? All we seem to have left is uncertainty and fear of the future. If that isn’t going to create a generation of miserable neurotics with no clear sense of purpose, I don’t know what is.

I never could learn to drive though, still too away with the fairies to pass my damn test.

I was like this as a kid -couldn’t leave the house, make eye contact or make a phone call etc. I was just a shy, sensitive kid. I grew out of it. Nothing whatsoever to do with resilience. I have always been extremely resilient and independent minded.

perhaps people just aren’t as patient or accepting as they used to be with children 🫤

Wealth disparity, poverty, parents struggling and the horrors of endless social media. I find kids envy the time I grew up in and while I get hives watching this is England there was an engagement with life that is hard to replicate now. For me the wealth disparity is replicated in the health of children - such extremes in people’s ways of living.

I've taught in HE for a while and it's not so much a lack of resilience but the sense of entitlement. It's been going on for years and COVID made things slightly worse, but not much. I agree with pp there's a lack of social skills and we can't blame it all on Covid.

I have some students with seriously difficult personal circumstances/home lives (partner murdered - off for 6 weeks and then came back because she had children to support and needs her degree; family suicide; cancer; bipolar disorder; crippling anxiety, severe dyslexia, ADHD). These are the resilient ones because no matter what life throws at them they value their education, want to succeed and I will do everything to support them.

Then there are the others, of which there are many more than there used to be 10 years ago. For example, I'm fed up of students complaining that they didn't get the grade they believe their work deserved. I have one at the moment complaining my grade (fail) has damaged her mental health and that I'm expecting too much of her. As usual her family are fully supportive of her and anxious for her mental wellbeing. However, my advice has not been well received...
Try turning up to lectures; and when you do turn up try not talking, messaging, leaving every 15 minutes to take calls or vape in the toilets. Bring a pen! Try taking notes on your phone! Do something, anything, to engage with the education that you and your family are paying for.
Try not to be so pleased with yourself when announcing that you don't read books. It used to be known as 'reading' for a degree because, you know, it involves reading.
When I speak to you it's not 'singling you out', it's to check your understanding, or ask an opinion and everyone has to be involved or its just me and the few who are interested and that gets a bit boring.
Yes, I expect you to have an opinion because it's my job to get you thinking, not to tell you what to think. If you don't have an opinion, try reading and then thinking about what you've read. Most text books these days come with self study activities to aid understanding.
Trying to get you to think is very different from me 'refusing to support you'. In your head this refusal to support appears to stem from annoyance and a dawning realisation that in order to pass you're going to have to put in some effort.
No, I will not tell you what to write because then that would be my work and I already have my qualifications. I will however help you to understand what's expected of you, recommend books and other resources to enable you to achieve, and direct you to additional support from library and wellbeing staff - but that would require effort on your part.
No, I will not take a call from your dad to explain 'my marking scheme, assessment rubric, and rationale' for failing you', and how dare he 'expect to speak with me at x time on x day' before 'considering his next steps'.

Parents, before you send your DC to us please help us by allowing them to experience negative emotions (it doesn't have to be anything too dramatic), failure, dissatisfaction, boredom, someone saying no or that's not good enough.

Sorry for the rant.

Coursework is a red herring really.

The vast majority of students would simply never ever complete the coursework - even more so in the context of anxiety/mental health times. The concept of students meeting a deadline is laughable. Would never happen in reality. Re-introducing coursework would simply put huge pressure on teachers to complete coursework for students and coursework also creates a further unfair gulf between middle/upper classes who can afford tutors and those students from
families who cannot.

ask any teacher - they do not want to see a return to coursework.

Increasingly draconian rules in school
compared to when?!?!

So why? What are you and your colleagues thinking this is due to? What has changed?

Everyone over the age of roughly 25 I would say, that inolves a few more generations than just the "rosy viewed" millenials though doesn't it?