Do today's teenagers/20-somethings lack resilience?

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Prompted by another thread, I'm reminded of the number of times, at work, when I shake my head in disbelief about the dramas some of the younger staff create out of nothing!

I work for a lovely organisation in beautiful surroundings, with some of the best 'perks' I've ever encountered. Our salaries are well above average and we have free lunches, parking, and private health care.

Despite this, so many of our younger staff throw complete wobblies if asked to do anything that they perceive to be outside their role description, and have close to a breakdown if a manager (I am not one - no-one reports to me) queries any aspect of their work or asks them to change something in a written paper, or suggests that they might need some help with a task.

Where is the resilience? I am a labour voter who cringes at the expression 'snowflake' but, gosh, I'm beginning to see where it comes from!

I am seeing this too. And in part I admire them for it about having a decent work/life balance, but I also observe that my students often do not want to do as they're asked. They hand in what they want to do for assessment and not what I ask them to do, with increasing frequency. They question what they're asked to do but then do not question things that they ought to question. E.g. research= Google and use the first source they find. I keep working on it with them !

There's a difference between someone who is an expert guiding a client in a different direction and someone who is only just learning the basics deciding they will do what they want and don't refer to the brief! It does make teaching interesting/hard work !

My friend owns a fish and chip shop; it's quite well known in our town, has been around for years. We all used to work at it when we were 16! She absolutely despairs at the young staff sometimes. She said once when it was really busy one of the girls burst into tears and said she couldn't carry on (they were doing fast orders with a queue building up).

They also can barely look at the customers which drives my friend nuts as well. She said it's like their necks are permanently bent down as if looking on their phones. Oh, and also, one of them cried when told before her shift that she had to put her phone away to work. 🙄

Our office is (annoyingly) almost exclusively staffed by young people. The older directors always whine about them not doing XY and Z (and yet keep hiring them because they are much cheaper).

I see something entirely different. I see a staff eager to learn, and willing to go above and beyond. I see young people who are fun and don’t want to spend their entire life adhering to the “presenteeism” the older guys seem to want. They mock these guys for arriving and leaving on time, taking their lunch hour. I see young people maintaining a work life balance, but also willing to hang back and do extra hours when there is a difficult deadline to meet. They see young staff who are difficult, refuse to learn and always making mistakes. I see them as refusing to put up with the bullying nature, particularly of our MD who only comes in to the office twice a week to bawl at staff for not doing something he hadn’t explained properly how to do. One particular member of staff had been written off as useless, no future in the job. He has now been shadowing me for 6 months and he is brilliant. He just needed someone to show him what he was supposed to be doing. Whenever there is a melt down in our office, it doesn’t come from the young staff.

Mostly I see older people being wrong about younger people, the same way as they were when I was a young person and first came in to the workforce. Today’s young people are resilient, they have come into their adult life having faced a global pandemic during school, living through an economy that has been in the toilet for more than a decade, in an education system that has been decimated, they are living with the consequences of Brexit and facing an entire adult life of being told “sorry, there’s nothing left, you just have to get on with it”.

What they won’t do, and rightly so, is accept working practices which should have gone out with the ark.

As exemplified by the poster who has had meetings with the school and says her daughter is ‘emotionally traumatised’ because a teacher tossed a pen at her!

I think resilience is generally something we get better at as we get older, so young people are less resilient regardless of generation.

I do also think covid has a part to play in this generation. My DD has just finished school at 18. She never had an overnight school trip in the whole time (they were cancelled while she was year 8-10, then other years were prioritised after that). Lots of sports/ clubs were cancelled for a couple of years and then the kids found it harder to get back into them, or the club had closed down. She hasn't been in team sport since year 8 - now just goes to the gym. Some older ones didn't take school exams. Then there is the WFH culture, which is brilliant in many ways, but also makes people more anxious and lonely.

So I think we are seeing a generation who have spent a lot of time in their bedrooms where things are safe and have not had so much experience of day-to-day failure as the rest of us.

Wait til you see what's coming through primary schools as a result of covid babies...

Anecdotally, based on my 3 children, I think it's down to confidence. My older 2 (both at uni, work experience etc) have been knocked back in life as you do (both serious lifelong illness diagnoses, falling out with friends, not getting the work placement etc etc) but they both take it on the chin and get back up again. They worry and get stressed like you do but they also have a certain resilience.

Our youngest meanwhile is alot less confident and has no longterm medication/physical illness to deal with everyday but she struggles to cope with stress. I do worry about how she's going to get on in life if she can't get a grip!!!

Where I work we’ve noticed an attitude shift over the last 5 years in work experience students and graduates. We are frequently getting students who turn up and leave when they want, are demanding, expect a lot for very little in return, argue back when given negative feedback, don’t listen to us, when they don’t get their own way walk out etc.

I wouldn’t say they’re lacking in resilience necessarily, it’s more that they are unprofessional and entitled.

Perhaps they are just more transparent than previous generations? I know lots of older people who feel personally attacked by any comment or disagreement. Or who throw a strop at the smallest obstacle (how many threads here about difficult DHs or ILs?). The younger generation verbalises it.

I work with some amazing teens/young adults
Hard working,aware and just get on with it
And then there are the others
One young lady came to the interview with her mum holding her hand (she also works with us)
The same lass about a week after starting rang to say she couldn't be bothered to do that days shift,so could she do the same hours but the following day?
Was told no,so went crying to hr,who told her she either did the shift,find someone to swap with or ring in sick (which wouldn't go down well as they knew she was swinging the lead)
She came in,cried the while shift about bullying and refused to do any work with her mum backing her up the whole time
She genuinely couldn't understand why she had to do that shift as it got in the way of her social life
She's often found hiding away when she feels like it and cries again if she gets found and told to do some work
Loads more but she's not alone-another rang in sick as she was 'tired'
Would moan and moan about any work she had to do and was always calling in sick motes due to her 'mental health'
Always found crying in a corner and moaning about the job (it didn't go down well when i said that there are other jobs out there)
She's now off on maternity and is finding babies really do mess with your mental health
It's not fair to everyone else and the ones who work hard

That’s not gentle parenting.

If a child is refusing school, there is a reason. Forcing them to go when they can’t cope with it is pointless.

There are some days I don’t force my daughter to go to school if she can’t cope with it. She’s 16 now and on days when it is clear to me she will struggle, I offer her the choice whether to go and 99%of the time she chooses to go, because she has a test, or will be starting a new topic or had promised someone she will be there to do something. It’s actually because she knows it isn’t mandatory in our house that she attends every single day no matter what, that she knows she can take time out if she really needs it, that she is more willing to go on a day when she isn’t firing on all cylinders.

She has a part time gig that she never ever misses her deadlines for.

My 16 year old has just sat two GCSE exams with tonsillitis and a sick bowl under the desk. He doesn’t lack resilience!

Read the scooter thread right now. My son damaged someone’s property. They thought he was leaving, so grabbed his backpack to make him stay. All the replies, ring the police its assault. They just don’t get to learn to deal with any adversity.

Stick to your guns. This is ridiculous.

I think you are tarring that age group !
I have 2 children and they both very resilient and work very hard and don’t grumble !
yes there are people who have no resilience but that is also people in different age groups !
And there are people who are in their 20s who will not stand for being took advantage off like what we wud put up with in the 90s I say good on them ! So many variations

I'm tired of the number of times that I (a train guard) ask a parent to use headphones when their child is watching videos on a tablet, only for them to claim that the kid is autistic. You'd think that parents of autistic kids would be aware that noise is triggering for many, but no...

At the moment in my team it’s the older generation I find harder to manage. The anxiety around small changes or challenges is ridiculous. I have one older guy with a victim mentality who spends more time off sick than actually working, and two older ladies who will cry at the drop of a hat. They’ve refused all offers of help, support plans, mental health referrals etc, and have no interest in attempting to work on their behaviours. The younger generation I find are quick to voice their opinions about things they don’t like, but will still get on with the job.

I’d argue it’s the adults involved that haven’t learn to deal with any adversity if they think it’s appropriate to lose their shit with a child over a tiny dent in a car.

Most of the trainee teachers I've encountered in the past 5 years have been woefully unprepared for the world of work and adult life.

That's interesting.

Friend's son is in his 3rd year of teaching. His new head observed a lesson he gave last term and made some mild criticisms of his work. He was so pissed off about it he's given notice and told friend that he's giving up up teaching.

My niece, who is the same age, is completely the opposite: an utter drama queen at home but incredibly professional and responsible at work.

Yes it’s is gentle parenting. You’re basically letting them choose something that isn’t actually a choice for fear of upsetting them.

You say there is a reason if they are refusing to go and I agree, but I’m my friends situation the reason is her DC simply doesn’t want to go. Nothing more nothing less. Let’s not over complicate it.

I think this is the result of many parents not letting their kids go out alone, not even to play with their friends. Obviously the pandemic made this worse.

I know lots of people who think it is challenge for their 11yo to go to the local shop to buy a pint of milk, let alone go on the bus by themselves.

I think due to traffic levels it is often too dangerous to let kids out on their own. A lot of parents worry about perverts and I don't think it is reasonable to worry about this is most circumstances. Perverts have always existed and sadly children just have to cope.

I wonder to what extent some of it is not real lack of resilience per se, but more awareness of ways they can exploit situations because of the “don’t call a spade a spade” culture we live in.

Do people really go off genuinely sick because of the stress of an office room change as mentioned above? Or do they think “ oh I can probably lean into this and everyone will feel unable not to allow for it.

Does a room change really even involve or demand resilience?

The reason I quibble is because actually the young people needing resilience - suffering from chronic illness, bereavement, abuse etc - ARE still being resilient.

I think it’s always been a problem with some young adults in that age group. When I was working in the nhs at ages 21-25 (I’m 37 now) I was often training and helping newer staff members who were younger or a similar age to me. At least 50% of them had no interest in learning the more mundane tasks, they just wanted to go up in the world and do the more exciting jobs. They’d go on and on about “progression” in their “careers” without any understanding that you had to have a good knowledge of the basics and an excellent work ethic in order to excel in the job they wanted to do. So I don’t think this is a new thing, we just think it is because of the rise of social media and people talking about it more.

It doesn’t help that most parents these days insist on tracking their kids so the kids genuinely believe they are doing something very risky.

I have to say ime it’s not teens and those entering their 20’s.

It’s those mid 20’s-30’s.

they live a life where by they will do something for the “likes”. I jokingly call it their RL SM page! Doing something because it’s the right thing to do is totally alien to them. They need the constant gratification of praise.

Im actually reassured by the teens and early 20’s I know because they laugh at that generation as much as mine do and also calm them snowflakes.

I have great hopes for the future based on that age range I know.

although my concern is that the kids of those people are becoming nightmares with no resilience and an excuse for EVERYTHING (encouraged by their parents) and I worry history will repeat itself a decade or 2 from now.