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

[ToutesetBonne]

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!

In my school in the 80s, we all got medals for taking part in netball competitions.

This.
They were hit incredibly hard by Covid, have to put themselves into debt to study further, can’t afford to rent anywhere half decent, buy a home, raise a family.

Yet they carry on trying to.

People of my generation (61) can be incredibly patronising and smug, forgetting how easy they had it in comparison.

I can't believe I just read that! Holy hell! Yet I completely believe it! And I suppose if you said something about it you'd be the one to get reprimanded not the toddlers having a tantrum 🙁

I think so. We have had a lot of early to mid 20s in the last few years and several of them have: had their mum call in sick for them
Cry when told their clothing wasn't appropriate
Just leave when they were given any kind of criticism (think using standard English around kids, not saying OMG, not picking up kids for cuddles)
Some of them have admitted they have never had cook a meal for themselves or put a single wash on
Arriving an hour late as they had a bad night sleep

I taught a uni class of third year students last year. This was a class of kids who had done their final years at school largely online. They weren’t a difficult class, but they much preferred looking at the notes online and learning that way. It was what they knew. Their attendance was bad at the beginning and when I asked them about it they said, most lecturers turned up, read the notes to them and that was it. Why should they drag their arses in at 9am on a Monday for that, when they could do it later and get the same mark. I couldn’t fault their logic and their markets were no different to the average class. When I explained to them that my particular class was more of a doing class, rather than a listening one, they were really engaged and attendance was good.

We can’t ignore the school experience of these young people.

We have this at work too. Some changes to policies that are at worst, annoying. We’ve had a whole circus or complaining ,kicking off, shouting at their managers, petty plans of how to skirt the rules by just enough, requests that certain departments should be excluded, and shit stirring about made up changes that would actually upset a lot of people. Not one of the people involved are under 30 and the oldest is hitting 60.

There was a phone in on the radio where a man with a business had given a young person a job and after a day his mum rang in and said he wouldn’t be in because he was tired 😴

“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..”

I can’t believe she got the job!

I think expectations are different. I recently returned from a university course and I was totally amazed at how much support, materials and engagement there was. Such a contrast to 25 years ago where I was largely left to it and it’s was up to me what I did. So I had to make decisions and decide what to learn. If everything is given to you educationally maybe you end up with very different expectations of work. I expected very little starting out.

I feel that young people are forced into being younger mentally because it's so much harder to start an adult life now. People are waiting longer and longer to have children/buy houses because they can't afford it. It keeps young people in more of a teenage mentality into their twenties whereas previous generations would move out of mum and dad's, get married and have children by the age of about 25. Now you're lucky if you can buy a house by the age of 30. I'm sure that is a major contributing factor.

More and more youngsters grow up thinking that they are the top of the tree. They have no concept of any higher entity or diety than themselves and are completely free of any religious or spiritual depth. Spirituality is an abstract concept.

It is right to value and respect every person, young and old. Some people have no exposure of considering others in a practical sense. Gone are the days where every week kids listen and ponder about the beginning of time, the reason for living and the value in every other being. They don't meet and chat with old strangers, don't work in a team for the good of a fundraiser, don't hear another's troubles, charity efforts etc. don't watch Dad's favourite boring TV program, don't have to talk to their Mum's friend on the phone, without warning. Kids have less to do with community, unless they play team sport with multi ages. Many children can easily bypass uncomfortable or boring things. They don't learn tolerance, patience and living with hardship incidentally every day.

Life for most children is so much more ME focussed. They don't often see their parent's share a phone or car. The twenty year old can't help being central to every aspect of their own existance. How often do they even watch the same screen as another human at the same time? These individuals find reality with other humans tough, sharing is hard, listening to another point of view or an instruction is hard.

I'm generalising hugely but many parents have to actively plan for their kids to suffer any type of setback or inconvenience because their children's lives are perfectly atuned to what their children choose.

Young people who have always had their own way are hard to criticise, hard to instruct and they feel bullied easily. Resilience naturally occurs when life is unexpected and out of one's control. You have to adapt and survive. Many kids experience this for the first time when they start work.

You should see how many CVs we get sent by "mummy"... It's depressing

Yes but HE is VERY different to 25 years ago. Even 10 years ago. Once they started paying fees, it's shifted to unis selling a student experience and all the expectations around that.

I had canteen coffee for a pittance that didn't taste great but we didn't care. Ours have Costa and expect it.

We also have kids going to uni who would never have gone decades ago. They often do need more support. That'll spark comments no doubt but I see how much my students develop through a uni education and it has value for all of them, IF they put some effort in to engage with opportunities. Whether or not they all end up with high paying jobs is another argument entirely.

This^
its a generational thing. There was no MN when I was 19 so my manager couldn’t discuss it so broadly with others and couldn’t make so sweeping generalisation.
Life is getting easier in some ways - you don’t need to walk to school and back 3 miles every day in any weather, there are mobile phones so you can call and check and ask parents for an advice however there are a lot of other difficulties like mental pressures and social expectations. Every generation has their difficulties.

Yes mental health is justified

They seem to have loads of time off sick too, for pathetic reasons like a cold. Even when working from home. Pisses me off, I’m never off sick!

We had employee A's mum call up to complain that A had been seated next to employee B in the office. B had done nothing wrong btw, aside from being male!

Over-anxious and over-bearing parents not teaching their kids resilience are the reason why their mental health is shot and anxiety is everywhere.

There are posters on another thread nearly fainting at the idea to leave a 17yo home alone while the parents go on holiday. What hope do these kids have?

But getting into the habit of self-editing, and not necessarily being satisfied with the first thing you think of, is a good thing. Too many people write something and never bother to read it through or check it for sense.

I so wish you were on a wind-up, but I have seem similar examples!

I wish I was on a wind up too!

They want a reason such as ADHD or autism.

Yep or emotionally neglectful

Yes!

We had Dh’s neice and boyfriend to stay when they were around 23/24, they did not know how to order anything when we went out, we did it all
and paid for it all, just v strange. At that age, we were travelling and living abroad, paying rent, working, mixing with adults of different ages. They have now got a house so have grown up
a bit, but both frequently can’t cope with jobs and quit them. My sil has rang Dh’s neices workplaces a few times to complain to
them about how they’ve treated Dn…! I had to organise interviews, outfit to wear, sort my cv, get myself there on the bus, from
around the age of 14 for part time jobs…cannot imagine the teens I know doing that at all.
They seem like children to me still, although are late twenties. They don’t drink, smoke, take drugs, which is great of course, but just so different from my generation in the 90’s, not much oomph about them at all.

I’ve noticed this a bit at my work. I’m in a creative industry where we take on apprentices, it’s a competitive and kind of gatekeepery-type industry so usually people who manage to nab an apprenticeship are extremely eager and will do what it takes to prove their worth.

Last year we took on a 20 year old who had been let go of by her previous workplace (no fault of her own, she told us). Over the next few months we were all really nice and forgiving of some of her lazier ways at first, because she’d told us her previous workplace was abusive.

We ended up having to ask her to leave for a number of reasons, some of my favourites were:
Mopping twice in the space of two months. Bearing in mind we all share the workload and our place of work gets mopped twice PER DAY. I once finished 9 hours working, she’d spent most of it sat on her phone doing fuck all and just sat there and watched me mop before locking up. Infuriating.

Traipsing dirt from her horse yard through the shop, and not tidying it up (so whole shop had to be bleached and disinfected on the floors).

Randomly brought her dog to work and locked it in the kitchen while she worked?? Because no one could look after it so thought that was a good idea? Another bleaching and cleaning session for everyone else the next day.

Leaving takeaway bags and packaging on the front desk

Final straw was a glass left on the doorstep by someone at the pub next door, we were going to deal with it and drop it in at the pub when we got chance. She had left her takeaway coffee from the day before on the desk, we asked her to move it. Instead of taking the cup to the sink, emptying down the sink and throwing the cup in the bin, she went outside, poured the coffee into the glass from the pub (?!?) and then took it to the bin! It boggles my mind. I don’t know how she functions as an adult! (Yes we asked her wtf she was doing)

Just never bothering to turn up or ever help. She seemed to expect work to plop into her lap with zero effort. I’ve always had a strong work ethic so can’t relate at all to the way she just didn’t bother and would complain she had no work in. Yes I’m still salty about all the mess I had to tidy up after her 😅

She’d clearly been babied her whole life and if anyone pulled her up on her behaviour she’d cry and say she was trying her best. Grrrrrr.