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?

I'm not saying those things won't need therapy at all. But unless the primary causes are addressed, then the number of young people needing to access it will grow into an ever more enormous tsunami.

We always had a phone fortunately.

I mean in the 70s

You can’t speak for them. Our parents did grow up then and have said many times they wouldn’t want to be a teen now or have the childhood their grandchildren have. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and it was positively idyllic in comparison to now. I’d have found being a teen now far harder and would hate it.

It's always a debatable point but today I have a new slant on it. DH runs a small business and one of the senior people came in today worried about a teenage (17) son invited to stay over with the lass he's been dating for several months (at her parents' home and invitation). The father and mother are both worrying themselves sick that the girl aims to get pregnant. IMHO, our employee is bonkers. The lass is 17 too, it's clearly consensual and her parents are making them a safe space to do what they have probably done already. There's approval from the girl's parents, and AFAIK, both teens are on track for university. I don't understand this.

The other day my colleague told me he hates the word resilience. He thinks it’s been used to replace the term ‘man up’. An interesting concept I thought…

Resilience is a useful word, meaning to bounce back from whatever. Man Up is a tough it out trope. There's not really much overlap. Both can be useful, but it's very divisive.

I’d say that perhaps getting so upset at the use of a word used for hundreds of years, in the right context, could potentially be part of the problem…

I might have to agree with you @Namechangechangeobv

Yep - going quite a stretch further, it's related to the old-fashioned term "character building". Like some adults of yore (hello, Dad, you bastard!) I'm sure there are people nowadays using it as a gloss to excuse bullying young people.

That doesn't invalidate either concept. Resilience is a far more accurate term for life skills including coping, picking your battles, problem solving, learning from failure, adaptability, and so on.

I've worked with children and young adults for the last 20 years. IME a large part of the issue is that parenting has changed. Resilience isn't something you just have or don't, children will look to adults to model healthy ways of coping with adversity.

My colleagues and I are seeing an increasing number of parents who are extremely resistant to their child experiencing any level of stress, discomfort or disappointment. Parents who describe themselves as being "devestated", "heartbroken" or "distraught" because their child has fallen out with their best mate, missed out on an award or been dumped by their first boyfriend/girlfriend. They see it as their job to swoop in and solve all their child's problems, to remove any obstacles, to make their lives as easy and stress free as humanly possible and often expect schools to do the same. On one level I get it, none of us want our kids to suffer. But these kids are not developing the problem-solving, conflict resolution or emotional regulation skills they need to cope with adult life.

We are also seeing a huge increase in parents who don't just let their child have a say, they let them have the final say in all things. So many parents who are scared to say 'no', who want to be their child's friend first and foremost, even if that means allowing their child to treat them like shit. Children have rights too and they should be given choices where possible, but ultimately the adults should be in charge and they simply aren't in many of the families I come across now. This dynamic is so much more common than it was 10 years ago and it ultimately does the child a disservice as they expect the world to bend to their will and can't cope when it doesn't.

We had no freedom of clothes or hairstyle when I was at school either, somehow we managed. How have things changed in that way?

I don't live in the UK, but I do gather from MN posts that the school system there is very much results based, whereas here I believe children are allowed to be children for longer. I also agree that social media plays a big part in these problems, but as I see so many young kids on screens a lot of the time surely it is up to their parents to try and get them involved in other activities and away from SM at a young age, People can't just sit back and blame social media and yet not do anything about it. There does seem to be a lot of ineffectual parenting.

Yes, some people in previous generations did suffer, but the fact is in many cases they did get on with things like work.

Because they had to. Because everyone needs to support themselves.

Now there is this idea that struggling means other people must support you somehow, or you should be given an easier time, extra time on assignments, say, or your teacher or professor can't ask you a question in class. The things the other students all have to do.

The thing is, society can't support that many people who can't work because of their feelings, and it's not fair to other students and job seekers when they are passed over because they don't need extra accommodation.

I really wonder how it is all these younger people got the idea that having a hard time means they don't have to work or perform to the standard expected of others.

Lots of middle aged and older people struggle with trauma. But you do have to get on with work and life. You only have one life. And life can get harder as you age.

I am not sure the pandemic is very comparable to things like WWII.

In many ways the war was much worse. But in general, people were able to carry on seeing each other, and in fact it made many communities that much more dependent upon each other.

It was the weird isolation of the pandemic that was so damaging and I think it's largely unprecedented. It would never have been possible to have people isolate on that scale in the past, for more than a week or so. There were odd examples of people who had to quarantine, but that was the few actually ill with a virulent communicable disease. And even the ones in sanatoriums and such were with other people!

More awareness about mh
More strictness and rules in schools coupled with a lack of resources and fatigued staff..
My situation is the same as forhecksake
It's not that they won't its because they can't.

@TempestTost I agree the isolation of lockdowns was hard. But if you were living in a city that was being bombed and had your male relatives fighting in the war, then that was very tough.
In WWII there were 384,000 soldiers killed in combat, and 700,000 civilians died in the UK. There were 41 million people living in the UK just before the start of the war. Nearly 1 in 40 people died living in the UK. And many of these were young adults.

My daughter has had a myriad of setbacks and missed quite a lot of schooling due to her diagnosis. However she's now 18 and never misses a days work. Yet many older staff are flaking all around her constantly. I'm not sure you can come to a conclusion that a whole generation are less resilient. Surely some are and aren't at different ages and stages.

Yes, and around a million British children were evacuated to live with strangers in unfamiliar surroundings. Some were, in fact, abused and some of those ended up with lasting mental health issues (but still, in the main, coped with adult life). The vast majority were sad and bewildered but they adjusted, often coming through it as a very positive experience.

People just don't seem to have the imagination to see just awful it would have been living through WW2. Being in lockdown just isn't comparable, especially given the many ways people were able to keep in touch with others.

I was shy growing up but still had to do English presentations infront of the class. My parents helped by encouraging me to practice with them as my audience and gave me other tools to help me focus rather than discourage me from doing it. Sometimes we do need to do things out of our comfort zone to realise actually we are capable and that helps in the long run. My dad also emphasised that if I got confused or lost track I would have notes to refer to, that I wouldn't be the only one nervous and that even if I did 'mess up' that was actually OK. My dd and ds did show and tell on a rotation every other week and we practiced with them to help their confidence at only 5.

Nowadays parents seem to think that their kids can opt out or just shouldn't have to do things that make them nervous. This is poor parenting because you are setting up your kid to fail. How are they going to get a job if they are too afraid to turn up to an interview? I'm not saying we all have great social skills straight away, I didn't and had to learn. It's also a lot harder for kids to get part time jobs at 16 now which for me alongside volunteering helped me learn the art of smalltalk and made my world bigger. Some kids will thrive when thrown in the deep end but others will struggle.As a parent you will recognise which your child is and should be putting measures in place to support them gain the soft skills needed.

I also think social media plays a part as do influencers. On several I have seen they are along the lines of it's ok to have bad days and if all you can do it the bare minimum then that is fine and you are 'winning'. That is fine now and again but not as a day to day.

So, many many more teens and young children are now being abused online. Times change. Pressures and dangers change . Dismissing what current teens are having to navigate and deal with because of something a group ( most of whom are no longer with us) experienced 80 years ago is frankly ridiculous and of no help what so ever.

Nothing kids these days are going through is anyway the same and world war 1 or 2, being online is a choice therewas no choice in the wars

But seperate to that I can picture parents of school age children or older in 50 or 100 years time still blaming covid for everything

Nobody said it was the same, it’s very different and I strongly suspect the children who were alive in WWW 1 or 2 would find today’s environment to grow up in equally as hard as today’s teens are finding it. FYI both our sets of parents had idyllic WWW2 experiences. They weren’t living in cities, had very limited information and were babies who then went on to become and enjoy being boomers. They really pity young people today. Many do, not all previous generations are sitting there puffing themselves up saying “ we are so great and had it 20 times worse”. The fact is we have to sort the damage caused by previous generations- the burning planet, Brexit fallout, online dangers and pressures, crappy education system…youngsters didn’t cause any of it. They’re just being berated and left to navigate theirselves through it. But hey let’s just carry on whining about great we all were and how crap they are- that will sort everything.🙄

Just what I was about to say!! People keep going on about phones, constant bad news, and social media as if there is no escaping it. It is a choice people make to be on social media, constantly be receiving news alerts, and even to have a phone switched on!

People seem to have lost all sense of reason, and as for blaming covid (or previous generations) for everything that is wrong A convenient cop out. But of course we couldn't have parents blaming themselves for anything that's not perfect in their children's lives!