To worry about the resilience of adults

[MyKingdomForACaramel]

Am not trying to come across as goady or insensitive but have seen a distinct upturn recently both irl and online of adults not being able to deal with, what are essentially day to day life/set backs in a rational way -what was once a mishap is now a crisis.

To be clear I’m not talking l about those suffering with mental health issues (I have had my own), but more generally

@ooooohhbetty technically, but nowadays you can only leave at 16 if you go onto some other form of education or training until you're 18. You can't just leave at 16 and do whatever you want.

So unlike previous generations who could leave and work full time at 16, nowadays teenagers must stay in education or training until at least 18.

These people are best avoided. I don't have any drama llamas in my life.

Also forgot to add that I’m early 40s and my parents never had to worry about my future. They sent me to the closest school, didn’t worry about enriching activities etc. They knew that even if I got low grades I’d get a job and move out into my own home etc. I don’t have that luxury. My DCs future is far less certain and I have to be far more involved to increase the probability of them doing ok.

💯 OP. Every other person seems to have anxiety of some form (I'm medicated for it myself which allows me to function as usual). People can't cope with basic situations and everything is triggering or a bloody crisis. It's exhausting.

Totally agree OP

A person worked with used to moan a lot about the younger generation and their expectations of life. They freely admitted they would not return a piece of work to her team without finding something, anything, to criticise about it, no matter what. Someone who worked for her quit because of the incessant negative feedback on everything she did. Should she have to learn to be more resilient or should her boss have to learn to be less of a jobsworthy dick?

I agree that there is an increased amount of pressure placed on people to achieve a huge variety of goals - from professional to personal.

At the same time, most people have been feeling the financial effects of recessions going back to the 90's - as well as a vast reduction in services, support, and community.

So, though I agree a lot of people don't seem as resilient - they are expected to do more with quite a bit less.

'Resilience' has become a buzzword, and like all buzzwords it is misused. You see it all the time on here - 'teach him/her some resilience' meaning 'get him/her to toughen up'. That's not (or only actually a quite minor part of) what resilience is about. Put simply, it's the capacity to come through setbacks and difficulties (the full range thereof, from mild to severe) without severe impact on one's sense of self/fundamental MH in the long term. And part of that is having a secure sense of self in the first place, which frankly I think this generation of parents is better at providing than previous ones have been. Child-centredness isn't a bad thing, neither is allowing children to interrupt adult conversations sometimes on the basis that a need needs to be met (I do dislike the attitude of 'respect for elders' and unquestioned adult superiority). What is better than 'telling under-5s they're amazing' is encouraging self-competence by giving them specific praise and encouragement and also naming 'failure' (i.e. a stage on the way to learning) as something commonplace and even inevitable on the course to mastering something.

I do think children grow up in a very peculiar goldfish bowl in the UK in particular. Constant scrutiny and observation, schooling and testing from a very, very young age, an expectation (that goes hand in hand with this) of very early cognitive and emotional growing up (just look at the threads on here where parents explain with pride that their dc are sitting through and allegedly understanding really quite complex films at age 3 or 4, or the very early ages at which playing with toys seems to be considered 'babyish'), along with a contradictory cultural anxiety about giving small, controlled doses of independence that seems to have lost all sense of proportion and then we expect them to morph into get-on-with-it adults the minute they leave school/university.

And of course we've given them the language of feelings/emotions/wellbeing (for very good reasons and I for one am glad of this), so of course some are going to use it perhaps inappropriately as they begin to negotiate the world.

This so-called snowflake generation have been brought up eating junk food and are over stimulated. No wonder they are all anxious.

It is quite simple really people fall into four basic categories

1. High Expectations, Low Aspirations
2. High Expectations, High Aspirations
3. Low Expectations, High Aspirations

4 Low Expectations, Low Aspirations.

Expectations being what you expect from life and aspirations what you want from life.and what you dream of.

In my experience, number 3 is the recipe for a successful and satisfying life.(though of course it no guarantee of happy life or an easy one)

I personally fall into number 4 which is not ideal at all and can lead to depression, being directionless etc but I think a lot of the younger generation fall into 1 or 2.

2 sounds better than 1 on the surface but leads to being disappointed and feeling empty when all your aspirations fail to live up to your expectations.

In general, I think lowrer expectations are best but that need to be paired with hope and dreams and work towards something otherwise life is pretty unendurable really.

And I meant to add that the internet and social media contributes to the ' high expectations' culture which seems to pervade society at the moment ( not just young people either)

DD1 is ending year 9 - she already sick of the teachers going on about how next year will be so stressful.

They haven't really been setting homework previous three years - odd bits so I can se the home work will ramp up but there's 12 months before exams are sat - she already sat and done well on a BTEC.

She just need to steadily work and prepare properly - exams are going to be part of her life for next few years going on about stress already isn't helpful I think - and that's coming form the school not home.

Something just have to be worked through an dthat's not the message that's being given.

I'm not entirely sure. Young people obviously lack the life experience that can bring perspective to a problem and blow it up out of all proportion. Was it ever thus? Is it worse now? I suppose it must be as there seem to be so many more pressures on the young these days. My parents came through a war and their attitudes would seem harsh to the young. It wasn't so much of a generation gap as a chasm. We were expected to 'buck up' and cope.

If you're not beautiful, handsome, clever with top grades and wear the right clothes and go to the right places, etc, etc, then you can feel a failure - and when you're young those things matter. As you go through life you realise how silly they were.

A 22 year old male colleague said openly in the office yesterday that if he had a choice he would be “euthanised” because life is so rubbish. He is a uni student who does a course which is 6 hours a week and no pressure to do anything else (working Ft with us over the summer). He stays up til the early hours gaming, eats lots of junk food, does little else. Moans all the time about everything. So very sad but I can’t help feel that he needs more pressure not less pressure, and it would help him to have a less easy life!

@CatteStreet you are right but also so very wrong. That is not how children build that. That is exavtly how children learn not to develop it themselves. As again, it is parents handing them those 'skills' on a plate instead of them letting their kids experience the emotions and simply supporting them through failures and slights. Handing them emotions and feelings and not letting them figure it out is not supporting them.

Most are using the term correctly. Most who disagree with that are the ones who are probably doing their children the most damage by not preparing them for the real world.

'Handing them emotions and feelings and not letting them figure it out is not supporting them.'

?

I think you're talking about what i said about 'failure'? I haven't said I agree with stopping them experiencing it as disappointing, but I have said we should be normalising it - as a - yes - disappointing (and sometimes embarrassing), but normal experience that can need to happen before we get something right, i.e. not the end of the world and not the end of potential future success. How you get from that that I advocate '[h]anding them emotions and feelings and not letting them figure it out', I'm unsure.

namechangeninjaevervigilant I agree with you completely, we have developed a culture in which expectations on people are very high (e.g. have great interesting career, have children whilst making it look easy, look good into your 50's , 60's and beyond) and basically many, if not most, people end up 'failing'. We are taught that if you have resilience (what the heck is that?), self-discipline, are achievement oriented and put your mind to it- you can do anything.

What it turns out is a) this isn't true and b) it is very very tiring to live like this.

To take an example: now people have to remain thin, attractive all their lives or feel vaguely guilty about it. I remember talking with the midwife when she was delivering my second baby about 13 years ago. She was saying that when she was younger, being good-looking was considered a lottery. A few people got lucky, everyone else was a bit plainer and dumpier but no-one felt bad about it or if they did, just accepted it. She said her daughter in her generation was really struggling with the same issue now- she was a fairly short, perfectly ok looking but not tall beautiful long haired princess but felt this was fundamentally unfair. Life SHOULD allow you to be greatly good-looking! I see the same with my girls, they not only are concerned they aren't good-looking enough, they see it as unfair they are not the best looking in the class. Lots of attention on superficial changes and already feeling inadequate. Now women in their 40's and 50's don't just accept they are going to get thick middles , they have to fight it or feel guilty. Hence we are beating ourselves up for not getting up at 5am and working out ( I honestly consider this from time to time even if I actually feel physically sick before 7am!).

Same with academic achievement which used to be considered a measure of your ability and would vary a lot from person to person. I did O levels and getting an A was amazing but there wasn't an expectation you could if you didn't have it in you. Now students think that if they just try harder, work more, it will happen and it doesn't and they struggle to accept what this says about them even though we can't have all A's! (I see a lot of students crying over these issues at uni which is when innate ability starts to really show through).

Our expectations of ourselves are ridiculously high, perfect tidy house, great fit body whatever the age, good career, and pretty much most people feel a bit inadequate in some way. Both men and women. It's really quite an unpleasant culture and very unaccepting of those who fail to make the grade (I see that intolerance on here all the time). I feel bad my children are growing up in it sometimes, and just try to engage them in things that they do feel good about- friends, activities, but it is fighting the tide of 'not being good enough' (for which the pharma industry and every other consumer industry has a solution of course).

I think 24 hour news has caused major issues in society too. It's a constant cycle of terrible things and whilst I agree we need to be more aware outside of our own bubble I think it chips away at you. Or maybe just me. It's hard not to think sometimes humans are assholes - what's the point?

There is a lot of catastrophizing language thrown about everywhere these days from media and the news.

Just thinking some more. Actions speak louder than words, don't they? A lot of what we do as parents ('we' culturally) effectively gives children the message that they can't cope, even as we are telling them with words how fantastic etc they are. I'm thinking particularly of the extreme anxiety around letting even older children do stuff by themselves, a lot of which restrictiveness is itself induced by anxiety about what others might think of 'us' as a parent. I also think we're bad at gradual transitions in the UK. 10yos not allowed to the shop 2 min down the road by themselves, 11yo expected to get on two buses across a city to go to secondary (somewhat exaggerated, but not much). I think we've got ourselves into a bit of a situation where children sense the stakes are really high, all the time (school/expectation to be reading from 4/SATs anxiety etc etc, fears around any independence, a notably materialistic and competitive culture) but don't have the space to develop self-competence to negotiate their own path. Some of the things people report young people saying on this thread appear to be clumsy attempts to articulate that in the discourse/language available.

I can't say I've noticed this, but then I don't have a very public-facing job and those who do might see it more.

I suppose you might say you can see it in increased helicopter parenting and people treating kids who are old enough to be quite independent like helpless babies who can't do anything for themselves, and that's not going to help anyone.

'Our expectations of ourselves are ridiculously high, perfect tidy house, great fit body whatever the age, good career, and pretty much most people feel a bit inadequate in some way. Both men and women. It's really quite an unpleasant culture and very unaccepting of those who fail to make the grade (I see that intolerance on here all the time).'

Agree absolutely with this. Especially the last point.

"'Resilience' has become a buzzword, and like all buzzwords it is misused. You see it all the time on here - 'teach him/her some resilience' meaning 'get him/her to toughen up'"

Agree with this. I'd admit to being someone is very lacking in resilience, although I'm working on it. I was raised by parents who were very much of the school of "the old ways are the best, our parents were in the War so everyone should just toughen up". They were into "everyone but us is a snowflake" before people started using the term. If I had a problem as a child, it was always "oh don't be a wimp", "toughen up", "I never knew you were such a quitter" or "what have you found to snivel about now?". In more recent years, I saw my mother bark "oh, don't be such a wimp!" at my ten month-old baby who had just fallen over for the first time. In the exceptionally rare event that I got a mediocre grade at school, it was always "you're never going to pass your 11 plus" or "well, that wasn't very good".

My mother is absolutely baffled as to why her "oh, for God's sake, toughen up" school of parenting failed to produce resilient adults.