To wonder if we’re going to be raising a more resilient generation

[Frigginella]

For years it’s been said that the generations since the war have no resilience because they’ve never known trauma or hardship. AIBU to think this could make our children a resilient generation depending how we behave and show them how to handle it?

My DD is 4 - I've explained to her there is a bug going round that is making people very very poorly and so ballet/gymnastics/swimming/ etc have to be cancelled for a while because we don't want the bug to keep making people poorly.

That's also why she can't have pasta for lunch etc

She gets it - we shouldn't hide this from our kids. We're not giving them a chance to be resilient If we shield them from the realities of this

The end of the self obsessed snowflake generation? I unfortunately doubt it.

Well WW2 was 6 years so possibly much longer than this. Rationing continued for years after that. The 50s improved as we pulled out of that and greatly expended the welfare state.

Spanish flu in 1918/19 killed far more than those killed by fighting in WW1. That is discounted and no one hears about it but it was devastating.

DC will get through this.

Depends on the final death toll
and after the bombs stopped falling, people didn't have to keep worrying about infection

No but they had plenty of other things to worry about loved ones killed fighting, bombed out so homeless.

Maybe it will make them more resourceful - actually thinking up ways to entertain themselves rather than relying on an endless succession of clubs. For me as a Generation X-er I think it will improve my IT skills (learning to teach online).

I’ve been cooped up for months with a sick child (off school). She’s just started To get better and now the schools have closed. I really feel for her as she was looking forward to seeing friends again. I think it’s hard motivating teenagers to do something rather than sit in their rooms on their phones & iPads.

No, I don’t think we’ll be more resilient. I reckon that anxiety levels will reach epidemic proportions, literally.
The fact that most of us are clearing all the supermarket shelves of absolutely everything, despite numerous reassurances that there’s enough to go round, if we clam down, suggests that we’re all acting disproportionately.
Resilience comes from deprivation, suffering and hard knocks.
All we’re teaching our children is “ grab all you can, when you can, and don’t worry about other people.”

There is a national stoicism here in Italy but not community spirit, because when you see absolutely no one then that's quite tricky. Some great four way whatsapp calls though.

I am horrified to have woken up to how wasteful my DC are, it’s one lesson I am glad they will have to learn.

I’m not worried by their socialisation as I don’t see anything wrong/odd about mainly socialising with family for a while. Plus we can all face time friends and extended family.

Clearing supermarket shelves indicates greed, selfishness, panic

Maybe also indicates a need for rationing

• which we had during WW2 and a few years after, rather than relying then on people to be sensible in a crisis

There are posters on here that think being told to stay at home is going to give them PTSD, so....

I really don't think they mean the being told to stay at home will give them ptsd

They might be less materialistic as they’re not going to be as spoilt.
A not insubstantial number will have just watched their parents ransacking supermarkets for toilet rolls they don't need. With an example like that...

My father and siblings were sent away to the country WW2. My father said it was truly awful as a small child to lose his parents and all family members. Was he scarred yes.

My granny was a nurse, my grandad a warden, he dug out the bodies alive and dead, she nursed them. Were they scarred yes, but as adults I think they were tougher in those days.

My DS went to uni. this year, he is now home again, he is sad to be losing what he worked so hard for. The freedom, fun, independence. He will survive.

I don’t know about resilience, but I do think this generation may have more contact with their families than previous ones.

My DM was a nurse in London for quite a lot of ww2. It takes a certain type of person to do that. My late DM in law worked for a solicitor and they moved from London to north Hertfordshire and she didn’t do much for the war effort at all! DM finished nursing and joined the land army.

Rationing continued at least 5 years after ww2. Of course very few people had much at all and entertainment was mostly radio, films or dances. It was a different world then and after the war there were still the most awful slums. Right into the 70s. It was not great for everyone post 1945. I think people didn’t want to go back to fighting neighbouring countries though and we were a resilient country. We made the best of what we had.

If Hitler hadn’t decided to invade Russia, life could have been very different here.

This idea that the people who lived through WW2 were incredibly resilient is rubbish anyway. They were ordinary people, living through extraordinary times, and there was some serious bravery. But it doesn't meant they didn't suffer trauma and mental health issues that plagued them the rest of their lives. In my experience of that generation they often just defaulted to not really talking about those times.

Also, you don't have to read actual accounts from the time to realise that there were spoilt people, there were selfish people, there were people who felt sorry for themselves and who did as little as possible, there were people who profiteered.

The main difference was a stronger government and a strong political will to keep society together and provide for all layers of society. That is missing today. But I am not sure that knowing that the government doesn't give a shit if their families live or die is turning young people into snowflakes.

Most of ds' friends are from relatively poor families. They are not used to getting everything they want or to life being carefree. They will be hit harder by the corona because the space they have to be cooped up in will be smaller and they won't have gardens as a resource. But they are for the most part fairly resilient; I expect they will cope.

In a word - no.

I think comparing this to what children in works wars went through is degrading.

Their fathers went to war and most never returned
All food was rationed
Some were taken away from family and their homes and sent to live with strangers
They feared having bombs dropped on them
This lasted YEARS - not weeks/months

Good god what an idiotic thought.

While I agree with most of your points, Corinna, food being rationed in WW2 actually meant there was enough food for everybody. Even for people who had never experienced having enough before. It was boring and dull, but there was enough.

The panic-buying we are seeing now means that food is actually running out in places, that there are people who may not get what they need.

Families are losing their jobs over the corona and being evicted because of it and unlike WW2 the government does not seem to plan to do anything about that. People on casual or zero contracts simply won't get paid.

People are stealing from foodbanks.

So while most people will be more comfortably off than they would have been in WW2, there will be others who are actually starving. That does not seem to have happened in WW2, and employment was at record heights.

And no doubt as the weeks go on, more fathers (and mothers, and siblings, and grandparents) will disappear into hospitals and never be seen again. Or have to die at home because there will not be the capacity to get them into an ambulance.

One thing about the war was that you had some warning about the bombs. There was a chance of getting to a shelter. With a virus there is no warning: you never know when a relative returning from the shops or from their shift at the hospital will be bringing it back.
(And people will have to go to the shops; they quite clearly do not have the capacity to deliver that they would need.)

Comparisons with previous epidemics show that this fear of the hidden enemy does have a traumatising effect. The Spanish flu did, the cholera did, typhoid did, the smallpox did, the plague did. Perhaps people should have been more resilient- but they weren't.

Because I offered support to my neighbours, I know their names after 7 years of living here. My kids are living in strange times and we are writing the history books, people will look back on this and see how we managed and what we did. My kids are learning in new ways, learning resilience and how to bake bread, and how viruses work, and why they are different to bacteria. They are learning that in my house we still get dressed even if we don't go to school, that routine continues in a new way. They are learning how to light fires, how to combat infection by using antiviral agents on surfaces. They are learning how to get on with each other because they have to. These are just a few examples, and we have barely begun. As a nurse in a specific speciality I will be out working my ass off in a few weeks, I don't expect to see much of my DC at all and they will be left to fend for themselves. They know this and they will learn. And when we come out on the other side - and we will - they will have life skills they would never learn at school

1. No hardship or trauma for our generations? Child abuse literally just doesn't exist? Sexual assaults don't happen? Bereavement? Illnesses?
2. No trauma or hardship for our generations? Are you serious? I mean, like, literally an entire fucking generation of LGBT people was wiped off the face of the planet. The people who survived - the ones who nursed their dying friends and siblings and lovers, who buried them when their parents wouldn't? The generation of LGBT people who survived the AIDS crisis aren't "resilient" enough for you? Jesus Christ.
3. I sincerely desperately hope that my toddler isn't writing fucking op-eds in sixty years titled "I Survived Covid-19, So I Know I'll Survive Alien Invasion (So Stop Worrying About It And Carry On)" as if her survival isbby her own grit and determination and not her luck and other people's dedication and hard work.

Jesus Christ.

No the opposite

Freedom for children has been reducing and this has generally been seen as a bad thing

For teens this is s nightmare. It's normal developmental behaviour to want to distance from parents, go out, socialise with peers, break boundaries etc

I think being essentially stuck in with family for months will be trouble for them. It's the total antitheses of what young people do naturally in their lives as part of growing up

I think there will be real issues out of this beyond the obvious immediate ones

Plenty of children need school as a place to get fed. Plenty of children need school as a place to keep warm (though thankfully spring is coming). Plenty of children need school as a means of escaping insanitary accommodation, mould on the walls, hostels with potential danger from other inmates. Those going on about snowflakes just don't know how the other half lives.

Of course it has to be done. But for some children the cost will be high.

Nope.

?

For example, missing a prom is a shame, not a devastating catastrophe.

Exactly. I wish more people would think like this.