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!

Obviously it's not 'all teens and 20 somethings'. I work with a bunch of late teens who are absolutely hilarious and brilliant workers, love them to bits. But they are a little bit keener to stop for a break, to chat amongst themselves or to go for long toilet breaks than older workers. I put this down largely to a lack of maturity. It seems to me that kids are maturing later and later - the late teens I see now seem to have the maturity levels of kids of 13/14 - it's as though a whole generation has fallen five years back in time. I don't know whether it was Covid or whether it's parenting or school or what, but the gap in maturity is noticeable.

I think it's parenting these days. Kids are coddled. Driven to school until they're 16. I would not ever drive my kids to school even at 10 unless it was pouring a cyclone. My kids were getting themselves up and ready for school and walking themselves to school at age 10. Getting the dinner on at age 13. I see many threads on here asking 'is it ok to leave a 14 year old at home by themselves for 2 hours' and scream to myself, and want to get the idiot posters by the shoulders and shake some sense into them! At 12 I was out babysitting until 8pm like many of us. Parents these days are abject FAILURES. They wrap them up in cotton wool to the extent a child hasn't taken the tube by themselves at age 14, can't walk to school, can't cook dinner, can't boil a fucking egg!

Look at how you parent your children! Teach independence. Teach resilience. Latchkey kids had it the best and were the most well-adjusted.

The result of these coddled spoilt brats could have been well predicted. No independence. No resilience. No initiative. Not wanting to do anything for themselves if they don't have to. Parenting (if you can call it 'parenting') these days is a bloody abject fucking failure. And since it's unpopular with the 'softly softy' parenting on here, I won't go on about the withdrawal of physical discipline.

And many of you still scratch your heads wondering how we all got to this place. As if most of us couldn't see the end result a mile away.

Sorry for quoting the original post, I didn't realise I did that.

I work in IT and it’s not something I see at work. The young people I work with are mainly graduates and they’re bloody amazing.

Most people of all ages are great where I work, but any moaning and lack of resilience is definitely from older people and they are the are the same ones that find things to moan about the younger ones for. I think they possibly feel threatened as the youngsters are so capable, willing, keen, get on well with everyone and are a breath of fresh air on the whole.

I don’t think it’s a lack of resilience, more a sense of entitlement. I’m 35 and the younger people I work with or report into me are always demanding things - promotions after a really short time in post for example, then getting really angry and upset when it’s not possible. They seem to be unable to just get on with their jobs and work hard.

No, they do not.

A close family member has just been very ill and passed away in the middle of DD2's GCSEs, she is still revised for and doing the exams. She has also overcome a serious sexual assault when she was 13, and various other things I'd not wish her to have gone through in her short life.

DD1 was self-harming in lockdown a year before she did her GCSEs as she was so worried about being behind with her work while studying from home. We and the school supported her and a year later she passed all 9 GCSEs with grades seven to nine. Now at university having a whale of a time and working hard.

This generation seem like fucking nails to me.

Self harming isn't resillence

I find young people are often flagged for finding work life stressful.They are not used to the world of work and find it difficult .I think its always a shock with the changes from School but they seem to cope less well now .My Stepdad remembered his 1st day at work, and being sent for a "long stand"After much head scratching and asking various people .He realised that he had been had ! (No such thing ,just a wait in the cupboard) the young ones today would probably have a fit.

From my own experience, I'd say YABU. But then, we only know things from our own, necessarily narrow viewpoint. But the 20-somethings in my organisation are cheerful, helpful, hard-working and flexible. I haven't seen one wobbly being thrown, although I haven't been there very long.

As for my teenagers and their friends, well they're still children, so they're still learning how to be human beings in the world, but in terms of resilience, I see building resilience in my kids as a key part of parenting. Life is can be really hard and cruel at times, so I think it's important to raise kids who are realistic and who don't expect to have everything magically handed to them on a plate. SM isn't real life and you can't believe what you see on there.

And I'm sorry, but gentle parenting is utter bullshit. The kids I know who've been gently parented are monstrous - entitled, spoilt, unrealistic and think the world revolves around them and owes them a living.

Self-harming is the very exact opposite of coping. It is the absence of resilience.

Reading these make me very proud of my 2 boys both have ASD, both have a can do attitude, both working full time, My youngest had a problem with an older member of staff, who kept telling him how to do his job, he had been there longer knows the jib backwards, he went to management, the person who he had the issue with said it was because he was a snowflake, management reviewed the video, saw it wasn't him and dealt with it, no tears or drama, he just got on with the job. Although I have met a few youngest who can't cope and I do wonder why they can't cope.

When I was young the older generation said young people were lazy, some were but some had better work ethic and efficiency than the older staff. Older generations always seem to find fault in younger ones. All the 'back in my day' 'the youth of today' etc is very cliche.

Latchkey kids had it the best and were the most well-adjusted.

Again may be true for some but some of us are pretty fucked up.

I was letting myself in from school, cooking meals, putting the washing on, cleaning the house and carrying a knife around the house with me to stop my DBro sexually abusing me again by age 12. That may be seen as building resilience but honestly wasn't ideal.

Absolutely - on the other end of the scale - I am dealing with young people who have not left their houses since Covid - and trying to get them to engage with mental health services. My own children came out relatively unscathed - I am thankful.

It was a cry for help, in a really unusual situation no-one had found themselves in before, and shocked me to the bone. It was her way of trying to cope with something by herself when she absolutely should have felt she could ask for help- I had been helping her manage school work but obviously not enough. This was in 2021 at the absolute peak of when we were all being bombarded with messages of fear, and schools were shut, and I was feeling a good deal of underlying anxiety myself in spite of feeling very good mentally prior to March 2020. She actually got in touch with a teacher at school to tell them first, who then got in touch with us, so she showed immense maturity in doing that, though of course I was so sorry she couldn't tell us first.

It turned out that being one of the very few allowed to attend school sorted her out, she formed a new social group and the routine helped a lot.

I think resilience means overcoming adversity, not never having any problems whatsoever. What does it mean to you, if not that @FlakyCritic ? Assuming you have a measured opinion to present and are not just being unpleasant for the sake of it.

It's not a cry for help. It's the inability to cope with emotions. And is not resilience.and it will come back

Spot on. I remember older adults moaning endlessly about Gen X when we were teenagers and resolved to never be like that.

While I think the proportion of people like this migh tbe higher, I don't think it's a new thing. Even highly competent teens/early 20s tend to think they know everything. I am constantly embarassed by how much I THOUGHT I knew about my chosen profession when I was 25!

The ones who also weren't competent, get weeded out and land up in other jobs/other careers or work in teams that just are not that great. I remember doing work experience in a really big company when I was 19 and being shocked at th ebehaviour of people in their 30s and 40s and 50s when the boss (a youngish New Zealander woman who they felt was a "slave driver") was out of the office. People were literally throwing paper airplanes around. It was the most bizarre thing.

And when I used to temp when I first moved to London, I was regularly called back to the same places because I was often more efficient, and more flexible, than the real staff.

I am working with a 55 year old woman currently who is genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever worked with - collaborative, a team player etc etc. But she keeps making really silly mistakes because she seems to have quite poor judgement but what makes it worse is she doubles down every time and refuses to acknowledge the mistakes, never mind attempt to learn from them.

My point is that I don't think it's new. I think these people have always existed and that young people in particular can be ridiculous. It might be a bit worse now becuase there's more acceptance of this attitude in certain circles, but it's not a new phenomenon.

Thank you.

Thanks for that cheery message. Of course we have to watch out for her feeling that way again. All I can say is that is hasn't been an issue for her in the last four years.

These people have always been around to be fair. I've had to deal with some absolutely bed-wetters over the years and in my experience, the people in their 30s-40s who realize that they're not getting anywhere in life are just as bad - if not worse - than the brittle 22 year olds.

I remember one guy years back, father of two in his mid thirties, used to get his wife to ring in sick for him because he couldn't deal with the stress of it.

Thankfully I work with some great kids in their 20s, so it's not across the board. Ultimately there will always be grafters, and there will always be soft, entitled, lazy parents raising soft, entitled, lazy children.

I work with a lot of middle aged people who throw tantrums at the slightest inconvenience. Maybe they've raised the young people who do the same.

Why Gen Xers were the greatest badass era ever. Though the second one is slightly exaggerated...
Proud to be a Gen Xer!

Parents these days are abject FAILURES. They wrap them up in cotton wool to the extent a child hasn't taken the tube by themselves at age 14, can't walk to school, can't cook dinner, can't boil a fucking egg!

This is crap, parenting in the past was often lax & shit.

Why Gen Xers were the greatest badass era ever.

But apparently they are shit parents & did the opposite with their dc! 😆

If we knew the answer to that we would solve many problems. It is complex - single parent here and until very recently on a very low income. Two out of three boys incredibly resilient and independent. Youngest one of 17 not so much - driving me up the wall currently. 🙄 As I said, it is complex without a one size fits all answer.
what I notice in my own workplace is that the younger ones cry and the older ones stamp their feet and become vocal. 😆