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

I have a DS who is nearly 17 and I can't imagine any of the parents doing that. In fact they all went to London for the first time at 15, we are only an hour away though.

Not at work today? People used to be resilient enough to work full time.

And people used to be aware enough to know exactly what sort of comments they were inviting about young people when they started a thread like this.

Following on from this is the raise in retirement age meaning grandparents aren't around as much to support parents. Parents retiring at 60 were relatively young and able to support with childcare, helping out with activities etc. retiring at 67 I doubt I'll have a lot left to give with regards to energy and I will probably feel like time is running out and want to spend it on pursuing my own interests.

@FluffyFanny agree with the mental health thing. Huge focus on it but in my view the wrong way. A lot is still about someone else needing to make adjustments so person xyz has it easier because of anxiety. I feel this is often the wrong way.

People need to be taught how to look after themselves before and during doing something challenging and then again after. There is not enough focus on self-care other than 'i have anxiety and so I cannot do this'. Enough sleep, sleep hygiene, diet, mindfulness (focus on one thing. Chuck the bloody phone away) and feeling connected to others in person are so important. I feel a good therapist is worth gold so I strongly believe access to proper therapy should be easier.

My tuppencd worth us that I think the very controlled childhoods kids have will be a factor. I do think that the free range childhoods of old were needed to enable children to build social skills, emotional skills, problem solving and resilience. You just can’t do that in the same way at adult directed and supervised activities.

I think there may be a lot of truth in this. I'm ancient, so grew up in the 60's/early 70s. We were allowed so much more freedom than children are today and our free time was much less structured. We didn't have "play dates", you just went and knocked for your mates to see who was around. We played out in the streets and local parks, as well as in other kids' houses.

By the time I was in my last year in primary, my friends and I were allowed to get 2 buses to go and play in large nature reserves that were 3 or 4 miles away. Not only did we not have mobiles, most of our parents didn't even have landlines. A couple of times, we lost our bearings and came out of the nature reserve onto unfamiliar roads, without a clue which direction to go in. We checked the timetable at the nearest bus stop, and worked out how to get home.

At 13, I was allowed to get the bus, train and tube and go into central London with friends. When my niece did this for the first time at 17, her dad and her friend's dad went into London with them, and only let them go off alone once they were at Oxford Circus. Even then were in contact via text every hour or so.

Independence breeds resilience imo, and if children aren't given the opportunity for independent play and other activities, and allowed incremental increases in freedom as they mature, they won't develop resilience and independence.

Ds1 is at uni now, and many of his friends there can drive, have learnt to drive, many of his school friends did, at the time. Not all, but many. We taught him to drive primarily and then he had a few lessons, so the cost was not too bad. Most don't even own cars now though. But the whole thing is possible, Not impossible.

I also think that we have promoted weakness to such an extent that it has become "normal" to be helpless, and anyone who doesn't support such thinking is branded as aggressive or offensive.

I completely agree with this. And it's not just young adults either. I am follow a few energy saving/budgeting FB pages and the general pathetic-ness of people is staggering. Posters don't seem to be interested in sorting things out for themselves, just post after post of 'Please help me read my meter' every month or 'I'm not very good at things like this' 'I don't understand how to read bills' and instead of asking for an explanation or even making the effort to learn themselves, they accept the answer then ask the same thing again the next month. That and endless accusations of 'bullying' when things don't go their way.
This afternoon. a woman said she was 60 and was amazed she could not retire now and had to wait until she was 67. A (brave) poster pointed out that this had been the case for more than 10 years and she would do better to keep herself informed and she was subjected to a torrent of abuse from other posters, calling her out on how unkind and rude she was and calling for her to be banned.
There is a serious lack of adulting going on and that is without a doubt the fault of social media and pages like these I am talking about.

Where I grew up you needed to drive - rural village so I do get some place cars really are needed.

As we don''t drive we live where we don't need to drive - however even here it is alarming how many of my DC peers don't know how to get about without cars as they've never done it.

They often don't realise center is walkable from here - no idea of routes or how to work buses/trains out - and often do rely initially on my DC knowing the way or explaining or till the small minority start driving themselves around.

I'm a mainstream sixth form teacher. Yes, in my experience, it is becoming a worrying trend, particularly the inability to cope with fairly standard expectations (coming into classes, answering fairly straightforward questions, not 'knowing' their teachers on a personal level). I do worry what will become of many of them. I have a family member who has not left their (mum's) house for 20 years due to similar issues. It's not an existence I would wish for anyone.

Not sure of the solution, apart from high expectations of attendance/engagement and high levels of support. Sadly the funding isn't there to do this properly.

I'd prefer the one of my childhood (without the racism), when we had free education for life, a functioning health service, no food banks, social housing, a lower retirement age, a house cost 4x the average wage not 8x and nobody was having smashed avocados on toast.

I'm in my 20s OP and I completely agree.

But it's not so much people in my age bracket, it's the teens and early twenties.

It's rife and I don't know what the answer is.
I think tiktok has a lot to answer for. Someone always getting cancelled and people jumping on bandwagons.

My cousin has to take an anti anxiety tablet before driving, she takes stress balls in the car (she shouldn't be on the road..)
My friends sister won't go out of the house or make a single phone call, dropped out of school at 14 and hasn't done a single thing since. She's 23 now. No diagnosed SEN.
Someone at my work won't come into the office due to crippling anxiety that wasn't there 2 years ago.

Not saying these people are making it up, of course. But agree that there's so much more of it everywhere.

Trigger warnings have a place, but not on every damn thing.

How lovely. I think staff like you are part of the problem. What constitutes life events in your eyes?

YABU. Certainly not amongst the young people I know. My DS is nearly 17 and so laid back he's horizontal, every single teacher comments on it on parents'evening both at school and 6th form college. His friends are all pretty similar to my tribe so I was that age mid to late 90s. The naval gazing is part and parcel of that age, we certainly spoke a lot about our feelings on everything, how we didn't want the predictable corporate life or work/family life our parents had had, programmes like Dawson's Creek and The OC reflected how self obsessed and neurotic young people can be, I appreciate that these were dramas and American but I think they were popular because they tapped into the anxieties young people often have. I think our parents' generation questioned our flakiness, personally, my Dad asked me when I was going to commit to something career wise and sort my life out as I was too old at 24 to be so aimless.

Equally, my DC will not have as many advantages and even fun as we did, they are resilient to this prospect, in a way that we would not have been.

I agree with this. It's a different side to some of the other points being made (eg parents being so focused on their own children/making their own children's lives easier) or the cost of living crisis/adult burn out etc.

Over the years, I've taken on all kinds of relatively small volunteer roles - class rep for my children's classes, PTA committee plus years of just turning up to help at various PTA events, volunteering when needed for my children's extra-curricular activities, helping out by providing my work for free for a couple of community campaigns. Ditto DH (he's a musician so you can imagine how often he's asked to do free music for things).

And yet, the two key takeaways I have from this are 1. the vast majority of adults simply refuse to do even ONE of these things, even just occasionally and 2. If you DO do it, you're almost always going to find yourself on the receiving end of unpleasant/rude/entitled behaviour. Which frankly, just makes my point 1 above more likely.

Agreed. Working in mental health services we have seen a huge increase in numbers referred for things that are sadly part of life but seem to cause significant levels of distress. Not typical mental illness but life events where often people don't have the resilience, coping skills or distress tolerance to get through them.
People are looking for quick fixes and there appears to be an expectation that mental health services have a magic wand that can fix all of life's challenges.

Most parents are both at work with children in wrap around until late. Most families struggle
to afford the mortgage on a shoe box let alone a house with a big garden or in a nice leafy safe area full of parks and easily accessible play spaces. Roads are faster, more congested and less safe. Kids can meet anybody via their smartphones…

I guess that was my point really, I’ll see the more resilient, but the OP will see the less resilient. We can’t generalise, which the post is trying to do.

Both the school system and parents have a lot to answer for.

Resilience is all about learning how to fail, but we try to prevent our children failing and overly sympathise when young people are upset about something trivial, saying that their feelings are ‘valid’ (whatever that means).

Parents are very reluctant to allow their children to explore the world other than in a totally safe way, as fear of predatory paedophiles and muggers seems to trump the benefit of those scary experiences of getting lost, avoiding dodgy situations etc.

Grade inflation is massive. We talk growth mindset (wrongly) and tell young people that they can be whatever they want. In addition, most private schools now have drop in counsellors, where school kids can go whenever they feel a bit upset. We have validate MH as a legitimate complaint, which is fine except we don’t seem to think, unlike any other illness, it requires a medical diagnosis. People can just say their MH is suffering, and others have to accept it.

And now universities seem to be joining in, cosseting young people until they are 21. Loads on here want universities to contact them if their children are having problems, denying them the autonomy of adulthood at 18.

It just isn’t surprising that young people are conditioned into seeing the world as a scary place…

Basil agree completely👏

I think this is the problem too . Also , so many talk of 'gentle parenting' on here ~ how can children become resilient if they can constantly do whatever they like and it doesn't matter , it gives them no idea of how to react to life as they have no standards to follow .

😂😂😂

My kids all did scouts and guides. Fat lot of good that does when you are struggling with severe mental illness without treatment. Seriously some people have zero idea of real life.

And yes I do want the government to protect young people from smart phones. The fallout from them has been catastrophic for my kids. And yes I do want the government to actually provide MH services for children, teens and young people. They don’t get better without treatment just worse which is a massive drain on taxes and the NHS.

Bleating about guides, scouts and in my day does nothing, literally nothing.

The parents are at fault for pandering to nonsense.
You only have to read some of the threads on here to see where the kids get it from.