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

[Namechangechangeobv]

And WTF do we do about it?

Obviously many young people are wonderfully resilient but the overall trend I’ve seen in my line of work (behavioural education) is that there are vast, and I mean VAST numbers of young adults who cannot leave the house, come into a classroom, look someone in the eye, make a phone call, speak infront of the class (if they make it in), cry when pronouns are wrong (daily occurrence), take responsibility to revise/get a job/learn to drive.

What is going to happen to these humans in the future?

Nope just some resilience I never said big

And given you also said that it shouldnt be traumatic if you are resilient we are basically saying the same thing

Maybe people are more sceptical about the way things are, eg work hours and inequality. Maybe they don't lack reliance but have different outlooks.

Maybe they don't lack reliance

I know it was a typo, but that's what they have too much of!

And we are back to the usual blaming the millenials

Its just us and our avacados to blame for all the worlds faults as usual

😂 I'm just trying to understand. And I do see it as a failure of my generation at your age.

It's all about the avocadoes, though, really! We should've fed you gruel instead of pop-tarts 😉

Resilience from children comes from having secure attachments with parents. Children are increasingly becoming peer oriented, spending vast amounts of time on the internet and as such never fully mature and are demonstrating incredible rates of negative mental health symptoms.

Parents are more stressed with things such as the COL crisis, poor sleep, high internet usage, this is then impacting how we parent our children. Communities have crumbled, children have lost their 'village' and now society is seeing the consequences of that.

A lot of Teachers are no longer attempting to make individual attachments with children due to high work load and are now seeing children who do not feel supported, safe or motivated to go to school.

There are just so many issues on a societal level that it's hard to know where to begin.

OP, I couldn’t agree with you more.

When I was 16 I couldn’t wait to drive, we were sneaking into clubs, making terrible decisions, my parents signed for me to go on an 18-30s holiday when I was 17 (god knows what they were thinking)

I made poor choices, I got in situations that were far from ideal.

I also got bullied in school, had some really bad traumas and dropped out of a levels due to a major bereavement. I went back the following year knuckled down, ruined my uni experience because of some idiot boy called Josh but just cracked on. Few poor career choices but am now a director on a decent salary.

I now meet young people who won’t go to the shop alone. Something has massively changed and a feel for the younger generation as annoying as they can be.

Right so nothing to do with:

Phones
Social media
Covid
Climate change
AI
Cost of living
Unaffordable house prices
Two parents having to work
Alack of affordable childcare
Closing sure start centers
Closing libraries
Failing healthcare
Increasingly draconian rules in schools
Increasinly tough teaching conditions
A lack of teachers
SATs focus
Crumbling schools
Strikes
Sex inequality in the workplace still
Primary aged girls getting raped at school
Racism on the rise
Educational debt

Just all to do with millenials having a rosy idea of what life is like 🙄

I totally agree, and mentioned in an earlier post that I have learned how to deal with things by having to do them, without help, and finding my own way.

So many young people, I believe, are being harmed by their parents rushing in to defend them, fight their battles, and not let them navigate situations by themselves. Of course there is nothing wrong with parents being a back-up, but children and teens need to learn what they can cope with by facing the task and trying to deal with it and solving the problem.

What solutions do you suggest, op?

Apologies if you have already said.

I don’t really understand what job you do OP?
many of the things you list are very well known symptoms of being ND. You do know it’s discrimination to expect things like eye contact and expecting people to mask causes mental health issues? I’d rather our autistic kids were not making eye contact and not speaking in class and we reduced the vastly increased risk of suicide. Perhaps you need to think about what actually matters and what ‘resilience’ actually is. Sometimes it’s advocating for yourself and not doing something just because some random education professional who doesn’t understand you thinks you should??

@dimllaishebiaith, you might look at who could have influenced those things and stopped, changed or improved them? And who's next up to the plate.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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 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 🫤

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

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.

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.

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.

Sorry... couldn't resist! 😆