To think that Children of the Blitz should be required viewing in these ridiculous times?

[GloiredeDijon]

I watched Children of the Blitz on bbc iplayer and I really think that the swathes of younger people who apparently lack the slightest bit of resilience and who spend their days in a lather of self diagnosis and neurosis need to watch it too.

I am old enough to have had parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles who lived through the war but am aware that we are fast losing this fabulously stoic generation and many of our younger people have alarmingly little knowledge of the history of their country.

Even having heard my mum’s stories about being bombed out, being evacuated, doodlebugs and rationing this wonderful programme was an eye opener.

I genuinely think young people need to hear, in a very human way, about the things their elders lived through and went on to lead productive and happy lives contributing to society rather than expecting the world to run around their perceived needs.

I’m certainly not saying that war is the only problem which warrants feeling anxious, nor that genuinely diagnosed mental health problems don’t need treatment but this programme is a very positive illustration of the ability of humans to overcome and not just survive but thrive.

All the participants in this documentary were fabulous human beings and should be our role models instead some idiot on instagram self diagnosing and crying into the camera for attention.

Do you know what social anxiety IS though?

I was diagnosed with it many years ago, alongside depression. Turned out I have ADHD. Not anxiety/depression.

It’s my belief that many people with ADHD in the past were able to cope a lot better due to the slower pace of life. Today we deal with outrageous stressors that many brains simply can’t handle. Looking back, most members of my family were clearly ND but I think they were able to hide it (not that some of them didn’t suffer hugely) from many simply because the demands on their disregulated brains were much less.

(oversimplification alert; don’t come at me)

Thankful for what?

A burning planet with all that brings and a world lead by dictators at war with far worse weapons, dire work and housing prospects, dying NHS and other services, war, death torture and abuse at their fingertips in their rooms, SM pressures, addictive screens shoved down their faces everywhere…..are not small fry!

What are you on.

Also what is this obsession with social anxiety? It’s hysterical. Is that all you have to focus on?

Complete agree OP.

I work with a lot of young people. They’re educated, sensible, hard working, sociable, and just normal people.

Admittedly we wouldn’t recruit someone who doesn’t have resilience or other qualities we want, but I simply don’t recognise this stereotype of young people.

They’ve got it so much harder now than when I was coming through in the early 2000s. In those days anyone with a 2:1 could easily walk into my profession; graduate traineeships were ten a penny, and although the top ones were competitive, there was a route somewhere for anyone half decent who wanted to do it.

Now there are four rounds of interviews and assessment centres and 500 applicants for every role. There’s no way I’d have ever got through.

I think some and some. BUT I also think YABU to think that the war generation are 'stoic'. I would say my mother's neurosis and stress levels are a direct result of being a 'war baby'. OK, so stoical in surviving bombings, and coming to another country after the war, but she has a lot of mental health problems which I'm pretty convinced are consistent with a fractured, frightening childhood. So yes, stoical they may appear, but actually I think there is a lot of generational trauma going on. Perhaps the more modern approach of talking things through and being more open about stress etc is healthier?

the consequences of intergenerational trauma.

Is this the latest 'therapy speak' for the phenomenon previously known as life ?? .....I do agree, however, that that social media is an absolute cancer eating awaiting at society

If you think parenting should only involve the provision of food and clothes and 'duties' like getting them to school, then I really hope you don't have children. That stuff could be done by a robot, or an orphanage. That's not parenting. That's providing for basic physical and educational needs.

I was parented by two people who thought that basic food and shelter was all that was needed (because they didn't even get that from their own upbringing, never mind love, and had absolutely no idea of what was normal), and it is not a recipe for happiness, or for producing well-balanced adults.

QED.

Did any of the posters lauding the stoicism of the contributors actually watch the programme? Almost all of them made it clear
that they were indeed affected negatively by
their experiences. Patsy the tap dancer by her own account was a different person entirely after the war from the happy outgoing five year old she’d been before.

I opened this thread expecting it to be “required viewing” in the context of remembering that there are children right now in war zones experiencing bombs falling on them. This was front and centre of my mind while watching it.

Outstanding piece of television journalism, but not a stick to beat our young people with by any stretch of the imagination

Thats literally the plot of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas

I don't think that was the case in every family actually. My parents were pretty invested in me doing stuff to nurture creativity. I played two instruments, went to dance classes and was taken to see plays,orchestras, galleries and museums. This was in the 80s and 90s. I don't think it was just me as other children took part in the regional orchestra, they went to the dance classes etc. I think w head more freedom on holiday but we had a cottage to stay in and if I stuck with my older brothers we could go to the fields and beach on our own.

With the odd exception, all the young people I know through my own dc (21-17) ARE resilient. They have it harder than I did, with social media pressure, impossible house pricing, shit economy….

My FIL was starved as a child in a Japanese POW camp and the last thing he would have wanted is to use his childhood experience as a ‘I had it tougher than you lot’ argument.

It wasn't that easy to buy a house back then. There was more social housing, though. Many members of the "sainted" generations that preceded the boomers were against mass immigration. My grandfather, a boy soldier of World War One, I won't repeat what he said about the council estate that they built on the edge of his village in the 1970s.

Is the OP unaware that there are many children in the UK and worldwide who are living through “the blitz” right now? Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, Tibet, the Uighers in China? How lovely that they will have the chance, if they live, to learn stoicism.

This country builds a lot of myths about the war which seemed to gloss over the basic issue which is that people lived in a state of fear, which nobody was sure was going to end. The state dictated nearly everything you did, from what you ate to what you wore, if you saw your father, or if your mother went out to work, to when you could go out at night. People were glad when it ended for a reason! They found ways to cope as people do, but they didn’t romanticise it, that was state propaganda, which some people now claim as fact, and a good thing.

Young people have it hard because of the world we have made. Easy to skip the last 80 years and forget that bit.

I’m glad your kids are brilliant but unless you work with this age group then you don’t see the full picture. I work in HE and I do see some very capable young people but I would say that at least half of the ones I work with are lacking in resilience, have far too much done for them, very little common sense etc. I think it’s a combination of social media, a ridiculous education system that values results over skills and critical thinking, and being generally molly coddled by their parents.

Someone upthread lobbed the usual mumsnet contempt at “therapy speak” and the idea of intergenerational trauma. Its funny that this should come up in a discussion of Children of the Blitz. Because it was English psychologists and sociologist who came up with ground breaking theories such as attachment and child psychology based on their work with children sent away from home or instituionalized during the war. Look up the work of Winnicott, Ainslie, and Bowlby and you will see powerful testimony and early documentary footage of how scarring these separations were for these children. We watched this footage in University and it is heartbreaking.

I would suggest also watching 7 Up and the following series where British children are interviewed every 7 years about their hopes and dreams. That will also give you more than a sound bite’s understanding of how class and race and family style affect children’s emotional growth.

Why is living through a war and putting up with all these restrictions the bar young people have to be compared to? It's ridiculous.

So not about teaching young people about history, but more being a stick to beat them with and call them ridiculous... right.

It was very moving. Those children and their families went through so much.

I'm not missing the point, I just dont agree and that is allowed 🙄

I have 3 resilient teens who practice gratitude and their friends are also resilient and lovely young people, you seem fixated on a stereotype that I, and many others on this thread, don't relate to.

My Mum was post war generation and her attitude was she put up with shit so anyone can, which is not healthy. She survived sure but had deep seated, undiagnosed mh issues which massively affected me as a child and to some extent still do now.

Hats off to people who survive and thrive after deep trauma because its not easy and admire it. My point is today's problems are different but still hard - unemployment and hard to access entry level jobs, high housing costs, lack of rental accommodation and mortgage access in some areas, crippling student debt...and yes mh issues not because there are more but because it is now acceptable to talk about and seek support for those, which i personally think is a good thing.

Yes this is romanticised in books about children being separated from their parents and going to a lovely English countryside to be safe.

The actual evidence is that children separated from their parents during the war did worse than those who were not. Children who did not understand their fathers because their fathers had been damaged by fighting both physically and mentally. Mothers who had to pick up the pieces when the man never came back. To pretend this is all stoicism without real cost is to deny that war traumatises all people in it. It defies what we instinctively know as parents.

My Grandad was an evacuee, he was also orphaned by the end of the war. He said during lockdown that he thinks the experiences children were going through at the time were worse than what he went through.

I don't know if I would agree, but it was interesting to hear.

Young people have been criticised by older people since forever.

I absolutely hate how the war is romanticised in this country. It was an awful time. It's not like people had a choice about it - does that mean they were resilient? History is littered with terrible times that people got through because there wasn't an alternative.

Young people today have it tough, and just like in the past they'll get through it - because there isn't an alternative. But they'll probably have to work more years, earn less, spend more on housing, have reduced social mobility, reduced life expectancy etc. It's not great and we should as a society be looking at what we can do to help.