AIBu to think kids can't be brave and strong anymore?

[vbnm89]

AIBuU to think that being brave and strong is now frowned upon?? I have noticed this generation of kids having very little resilience. My kids and their friends are always moaning they have something wrong or something hurts or they can't do something. If children fall over now you aren't allowed to say be brave and teaching them to be strong could be bad for their mental health. I only ever keep my kids off school for a temperature or being sick - I tell them to suck it up and get on with it - you can't just miss school every time something hurts.

When I was a teenager I wanted to be strong and tough but now it seems that you can't bring your children up to be strong as you may damage their mental health. Children seem to want to be weak and dependable on others rather than strong and independent. They don't seem to have any get up and go and if anything is a bit tough the mental health card is used to stop them having to do anything they can't or don 't like doing!!

@purpleboy I think people have interpreted your post on the way they have because you've spent so much time listing the various younger people you've heard about, who you feel lack resilience.

As you say, though, your examples are meaningless. I could counter with a dozen examples of older people I've encountered who have been a bit pathetic about one thing or another, and it would prove nothing.

As I pointed out earlier on the thread, pretty much every generation stretching back to the beginning of recorded history has moaned about how 'kids these days' lack resilience. For that to be true, we would have had to have started out as near superhuman badasses, and by now we would have evolved into sobbing jellyfish.

It's not true. It's just human nature to feel that way, because times change, and people change with them, and there will always be people who are pessimistic about that (maybe because they lack resilience...)

Here's what actually happens.

Every generation comes up with solutions intended to make our lives easier and more pleasurable, because that's our nature. Fire, tools, houses, farming, the industrial revolution, electricity, running water, washing machines, TV, supermarkets, smartphones, etc etc.

Every generation remembers how much 'harder' life was before the latest innovations. Then we look at the next generation and see that they're still unhappy, and still stressed, despite all this stuff we invented for them (oh, and we also bitch about how materialistic they are for wanting the stuff we invented for them, and told them they needed in order to be happy).

It's not because people are getting less resilient. It's because we're constantly being told that the world is going to shit, but also life is so much easier, so why aren't you happy like everyone else on social media? When actually the changes have very little to do with happiness.

Simple version.

As regards Purpleboy's examples of uni students: 40 years ago, far fewer people did go to uni, and those who did tended to be exceptionally committed and exceptionally well trained. Now that far more people go, there are more who need a handhold at times, and a few who probably really aren't suited and should be doing something else. So we're not comparing like with like.

Having said that, students in the 80s certainly did have breakdowns and some became alcoholics or drug users - possibly more than now.

As regards the examples about staff: there have always been staff who were lazy or found excuses for not doing their jobs. Especially among temps, and others not fully committed to the particular job.

And younger children have always at times been moany, stroppy and not reacted well to disappointments. It's called being childish. I don't think there's ever been a Golden Age of perfection.

What is true, is that nowadays children have less physical independence than their parents and grandparents did. It is now almost unimaginable for a 4-or 5-year-old to go to a shop on their own, or for 7-and 8-year-olds to play games outdoors in the neighbourhood without supervision. Two generations ago, such things were the rule rather than the exception. But that is more a matter of the dominance of the car, than loss of resilience in young people.

It is now almost unimaginable for a 4-or 5-year-old to go to a shop on their own,

That is just common sense, there are busy car parks around or gangs depending on the area hanging around the local shop.

or for 7-and 8-year-olds to play games outdoors in the neighbourhood without supervision.

Again it depends on the traffic in the area.
Plenty of DC play unsupervised around here, all outdoors games I played in the 80's.

The green area and cul-de-sac areas have lots of DC out unsupervised.

The only issue are cars not sticking within the speed limit in the area if adults behaved all would be well.

My 5yo and 7yo are currently out playing. My 10yo and 13yo walk themselves to/from school. Next year when they are in Year 4 (age 8-9) my 7yo will be expected to walk to/from school without an adult and school will send home a permission slip for this. We have a three tier system and when they move to middle school for the start of year 5 there are no parents allowed in the yard and the majority of the children make their own way to school so it prepares them for that. My DC go to the shop themselves, as do most of the children here, my 5yo doesn't go with the other kids yet but that's because they're not quite sensible enough yet. One of my DC is often in theatre productions so spends entire days/evenings at whichever theatre they're performing at without me/DH, in the care of a chaperone, responsible for learning their part(s), lyrics, taking care of their kit, shoes, etc. Another my DC is part of the scouting movement and is plodding their way through various badges so is often off out to do things for that.

@JesusInTheCabbageVan

What an original thought, OP...

“Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.”

Book III of Odes, Horace
circa 20 BC

“Whither are the manly vigour and athletic appearance of our forefathers flown? Can these be their legitimate heirs? Surely, no; a race of effeminate, self-admiring, emaciated fribbles can never have descended in a direct line from the heroes of Potiers and Agincourt…”

Letter in Town and Country magazine republished in Paris Fashion: A Cultural History
1771

“Never has youth been exposed to such dangers of both perversion and arrest as in our own land and day. Increasing urban life with its temptations, prematurities, sedentary occupations, and passive stimuli just when an active life is most needed, early emancipation and a lessening sense for both duty and discipline…”

The Psychology of Adolescence, Granville Stanley Hall
1904

“Parents themselves were often the cause of many difficulties. They frequently failed in their obvious duty to teach self-control and discipline to their own children.”

Problems of Young People, Leeds Mercury
1938

“…in youth clubs were young people who would not take part in boxing, wrestling or similar exercises which did not appeal to them. The ‘tough guy’ of the films made some appeal but when it came to something that led to physical strain or risk they would not take it.”

Young People Who Spend Too Much, Dundee Evening Telegraph
1945

Quite. Kids haven't changed.

Every generation whinges about how the 'young people today' are more feckless, immoral, decadent, soft, disrespectful, lazy, dishonest, materialistic, ignorant, undisciplined than 'we were in my day'.

If this were true - that each generation is in all these ways measurably worse than the last - civilisation would have collapsed several hundred or even several thousand years ago.

It's evidently bollocks. So what also hasn't changed is middle-aged and old people. Really, I am quite often embarrassed by my contemporaries.

Age is wasted on the old.

Quite. Kids haven't changed.

They have though. Ask anyone who's been a teacher for a couple of decades or more. I'm not comparing kids through the rose-tinted spectacles of my own childhood, but comparing the ones I teach now to the ones I taught ten, twenty or twenty-five years ago. One of the biggest things that have changed them is obviously social media and the internet. It's not their fault, and in any case it doesn't necessarily mean a higher percentage of them are feckless or ignorant (they are a lot less ignorant in many ways). But are they the same as kids 25 years ago? No.

They're not worse though or less resilient just because they're not exactly the same as the previous generation.

I'm not so sure. I think maybe they are less resilient to some things and more resilient to other things compared with previous generations. The causes aren't always clear.

There is a social awareness/ social contagion effect going on with certain mental health and identity issues which means it's hard to tell whether it's that more students have these issues than in the past, or more students are able to recognise, understand and express these issues if they have them... and/or that lots of students have heard of these issues and identify into them or cynically adopt them as a way of avoiding things and getting out of trouble. I'm not claiming that the latter is true for a majority, but it's undoubtedly true for some.

I don’t tell my kids to be brave. But I do tell them to persevere and ask for help. I think the two can be simultaneous.

I think kids of today are way more resilient.

They have far more to cope with- climate change, a pandemic, coping with the internet, the loss of job security, massive student debt, harder exams and more pressure, the likelihood of never being a home owner, not having the security of a job for life, a decaying NHS…..

Baby boomers had none of the above.

I really take offence towards the inference that mental health struggles are seen as a sign of weakness. My dc has gone through hell and is starting to come out the other side,probably more resilient than most people I know.

Where is the line between independence and neglect? What's the cut off age?

Let's face it, most of the free range kids of yesteryear were that way either due to childcare issues or because parents didn't want them underfoot. It wasn't a conscious decision or a parenting style,it was easy and convenient.

Let's face it, most of the free range kids of yesteryear were that way either due to childcare issues or because parents didn't want them underfoot. It wasn't a conscious decision or a parenting style,it was easy and convenient.

Definitely so and I think it shows that this was less than ideal in the way that modern parental don't tend to have their DC off roaming for hours at a time. My DC play out but I always have a vague idea of where they are, my parents used to have no idea where we were so long as we were back by tea time. I can remember getting into all sorts of dodgy situations, messing on down beside the train tracks (never on the tracks but even beside them was stupid), playing on building sites, very carefully climbing over the razor wire fence of the private school to look for tennis balls in the long grass, climbing over the wall at the convent to pinch fallen apples and pears (and running away from the nuns when they spotted us). I remember four children from my childhood who died - two hit by cars, one fell through a skylight, one drowned swimming in a quarry - all while out roaming unsupervised. Obviously accidents like this do still happen, that's the nature of accidents, but not as many. Closer supervision is no bad thing.

@Fairislefandango

Quite. Kids haven't changed.

They have though. Ask anyone who's been a teacher for a couple of decades or more. I'm not comparing kids through the rose-tinted spectacles of my own childhood, but comparing the ones I teach now to the ones I taught ten, twenty or twenty-five years ago. One of the biggest things that have changed them is obviously social media and the internet. It's not their fault, and in any case it doesn't necessarily mean a higher percentage of them are feckless or ignorant (they are a lot less ignorant in many ways). But are they the same as kids 25 years ago? No.

I think that's fair. Each generation has its own stuff to deal with, and those different circumstances lead to differences in behaviours, attitudes, expecations. For instance, kids in the Sixties weren't necessarily the same as kids in the Fifties or Seventies.

So, it would have been more precise for me to say that circumstances may have an effect on kids, but fundamentally, the basic stuff is much the same.

More importantly, they're not in some way 'worse'.