Are we bringing up a nation of snowflakes??

[shellstarbarley]

Are this generation of kids going to be a nation of snowflakes? I am bringing my children up the way my mum brought me up and I would say I am quite a strong person with minimal issues. I work in a primary school and every little graze or bump has to be accounted for children fall over and cry and scream until somebody comes, very few kids seem to just get up and dust themselves off and carry on. My kids rarely have a day off school but their friends seem to be off for any little thing and everyone seems to be dying when they have a cold or a sprained wrist etc. Parents won't let their children walk to school or even catch a bus so they are reliant at parents at all times. When we were 13 all our pocket money was stopped and she we had to find a part time job I did a paperround, babysitting and washed up in a local pub my brother mucked out at a stables and my other brother helped on our cousins farm. I know now it is much harder to get jobs like it was then but teens parents seem to do so much for them that they can't do much for themselves anymore. I loved being busy and still do and loved the responsibility in my part time jobs aand I remember my dad saying to me when I was out of work in my early 20's and claiming benefits that the one thing I cettainly wasn't was lazy but I would always be out doing something constructive whilst looking for work as they had instilled this strong ethic in me. We got buses and walked everywhere and we never lied to our parents we always told them where we were or used a landline at a friends house or phone box if our plans changed. Maybe looking back as my mum worked full time it was a bit of a parenting cop out. I don't know. BUT I am sure this made us strong adults. I don't give up everytime I get a cold or period pain dose up and carry on like wise I don't miss work. I also remember phoning and booking my own hair and dental and dr appts and even going to doc appts on my own at 15. I am trying really hard to bring my kids up this way but is so hard because their friends get lifts everywhere , their parents give them an endless supply of money and shower them with sympathy every time they have a sniffle or a grazed knee. I want my kids to be able to survive in the adult world because actually it is quite a harsh place and you have to be strong and determined to fight against the problems you may come up against and I think my parents did me a massive favour as I feel able to cope with adult life and conquer the problems because I learnt to build up strategies when I was growing up and not be 100% reliant on my parents for everything.

I think society's approach is going off in some wrong directions. In particular I think skills that need to be learnt or things that are getting lost are:
Critical thinking
Reading quality journalism
Thinking children should magically know how to regulate their emotions or manage relationships without parenting
Thinking mental health comes primarily from therapists not balanced fulfilling fair lives and loving families spending time together and personal action to increase pleasurable activity and manage stresses (for instance wondering why dc on a treadmill of pressurised exams and activities are getting unwell without realising it is lifestyle related and while refusing to reduce any demands).
Learning how to debate and disagree respectfully
Free speech
Thinking life is usually pain free, when realistically it is usually full of crap of one sort or another to deal with.
My dc have part time jobs and often their colleagues just don't show up for shifts and they still don't get let go. They love their jobs, they are learning to deal with difficult people, learning to say no to too many extra shifts, learning customer service and responsibility and communication, gaining confidence, having fun and saving up their pay packets.
Good parenting comes in many different forms but I do think helicopter parenting breeds anxiety and slows development and mastery.

I tend to ignore anyone who has no dialogue other than "snowflake" when they see things they don't agree with. It tells me all I need to know about them and their attitude to others.

I disagree with what you have said in regards to small children. I think small children benefit from expressing their feelings and being supported by parents.

The childhood you describe would now be considered neglectful. When parents had multiple children and had no washing machines and other mod cons, they simply could not give children the level of care that is considered standard now.

But this is progress. Children should receive a high standard of care and attention because it is vital to their psychological development.

I don’t disagree with what you have said about teenagers though. My view is that parents should give a high standard of care in the early years so that their children become independent and well adjusted teenagers and adults. Although everyone develops at different rates.

@shellstarbarley

It just seems to be that kids aren't as resilient anymore because their parents are still doing everything for them at 15/16. I was always under the impression that when they are teenagers your job as a parent is to get them ready for the next step into the adult world and the adult can be pretty rubbish so giving them and teaching them the tools to deal with this is IMO important. ie getting a small part time job - paper rounds and babysitting for friends and relatives is legal - it gives them a sense of responsibility and independence so when they come to getting a job at 18 they know what to expect. I am not saying every young adult is the same but I know of several young adults who can't hold down jobs because they have never had any responsibility and find criticism hard because it is something they have never had to encounter.

It's not just parents doing everything for teens though. Teachers do it too. I remember sitting down with my DD at 14/15 as she wanted help with an essay. She asked me as writing has been part of my professional career. As soon I started trying to have a discussion with her, she said "I'm going to ask my teacher, she'll just tell me the answer." and I did check with her afterwards and the teacher did indeed just tell her the answer. DD didn't have to apply any effort to working the answer out for herself at all. She simply had to regurgitate what she had been told in the way she had been told to regurgitate it. She was never allowed to be wrong and correct herself in her working life = her education - as you say they "find criticism hard because it is something they have never had to encounter". Though clearly they frequently do now because people keep calling them snowflakes. Honestly, it's a bit much for a teacher to call these children snowflakes.

Academically, teaching regurgitation clearly worked - she gained a 1st Class degree but, gosh, DD's knowledge is neither deep nor broad. She was taught to the test and entirely reliant on the teaching staff. Arguably that might be caused by an over-abundance of educational policy and directives. If there's a lot to get through, teaching to the test becomes the easiest way to manage it.

Unsurprisingly, when she started work she really struggled to adjust because she couldn't keep getting for an extension for a piece of work or ask for a lesser workload because she was stressed, and no-one was willing to spoon fed the answers - no-one has time. She was expected to know or find out for herself and do. It was a big shock for her.

Luckily, her first class degree is in a shortage area so she can work for who she wants when she wants. She's one of the lucky ones.

It's easy to blame parents but it isn't only parents who are spoon feeding children they then expect to show initiative and resilience. It is very unfair to the children and the young people they are becoming. They are doing their best with what they were given.

If my kids hurt fall and hurt themselves at school they prefer not to tell anyone as it eats in to their play time. They don’t like to have to sit in the first aid room. And they also say that some of the playground supervisors aren’t that kind and it normally results in a telling off !

WRT where this came from - I do think it is an import from the US. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as prevalent in non-Anglophone western nations; whilst many teens in the EU are admirably proficient in English, I don’t think you see them to the same degree on social media and I know that education systems in France and Italy take aeons to change.

Yeah we should teach kids more critical thinking and then they’ll grow up, think critically, and get shot down by people who are set in their ways and can’t abide the prospect of change.

This is one of those usual OPs who is bitter that the next generation may have a better time of it than they did so romanticises their own youth as being ‘better’ because they feel shortchanged and want every generation that follows to be as miserable as they were

I agree, OP. Encouraging your child to be independent and resilient is nothing to do with neglect, as some posters are suggesting. These children are being given a real advantage in life and will be happier for it, in my view.
My DD has a 10 hour a week evening job at 16 which she loves (I encouraged her to set up a little car cleaning business when she was younger, but she lacked enthusiasm!). She makes doctor appointments without involving me, and has just mentioned that she's made an appointment for an eye test, as she knows someone who's started to wear glasses. She uses public transport a lot. I don't get involved in her homework at all and never have, and she fills in school paperwork and asks me to sign it, and has done since primary. She does a lot of cooking for herself, as she's a vegetarian. She does her share of housework, when pushed. When she was younger, she spent months abroad living with various families she didn't know (language exchanges) from the age of 12, and went to schools abroad, while not speaking the language well. She loved it. I still think that I protect her a bit too much. It's hard not to, in this culture. The family she lived with in Germany allowed their children to cycle where they wanted, on their own, in a major city from the age of 10. I've met a lot of German children, and they have nearly all been extremely self confident.

YANBU but that’s all say as there will just be a pile on.

I only have tiny children so little direct experience, but one thing I've been thinking about a lot recently is the way that extreme anxiety about your children - starting from birth, but continuing indefinitely as far as I can see - is currently presented as not just normal but as a sign of being a loving and good parent. I had severe anxiety in my 20s and a lot of counselling (and medication, though I no longer take that) to try and restore my mental equilibrium. I've found it both challenging and striking since having children that that equilibrium, and my determination not to pass my own anxiety into them (something that all the scientific literature agrees is highly likely: anxious parents have anxious children, by and large) is seen as a sign that I'm cold, uncaring or even negligent. Our current culture is that mothers should be racked with fear for their children and that they should be striving to eliminate all risk or even unpleasantness from their children's lives. I think it's really unhealthy and toxic for parents and for children.

@foxgoosefinch

Also it’s absolutely routine now that when you give undergrad students work or reading, almost none of them actually do it all. Most of them do a bit and then quite cheerfully admit they aren’t doing all the work. During the last 3-5 years it’s become absolutely routine for students not to do the reading, not to turn in essays, to use academic meetings to talk about personal mental health problems, to be given large amounts of pastoral support, free counselling and resources, to not turn up to teaching, and then to be disappointed by their exam grades and complain they haven’t “felt supported”. It genuinely does not seem to occur to them that if you want to do well you actually do the reading and the work and you take your lecturers’ advice.

I would say that students between about 2005 and 2015 worked way harder than I or my friends ever did at university, and I was regularly surprised at how resilient, self-sufficient and hard-working they were. It was a pleasure to teach such competent young people.

Since about 2015 it’s been the complete reverse. I don’t know what’s changed since then - the culture in general? Something in the school system?

Are you allowed to discipline students who don't do the work?

@DazzlePaintedBattlePants

I tend to agree. Having seen the transformation a new teacher has made to one of our incredibly difficult classes in primary school this year, I think we have completely screwed over a bunch of children, mainly boys.

We had a Y5 group which had more than 50% SEND, lots of swearing, running in and out of the classroom, fighting and really disruptive behaviour. Loads of resource and support put in by school and LA (extra adults, nurture group etc). Class teacher couldn’t cope and left. We have supply in because we couldn’t recruit, on first day of term supply teacher (not from U.K.) gave the class the bollocking of their lives. Several of the difficult kids in tears. The supply teacher has ruled that class with an iron fist.

We’re now a month into term. That class is calm, orderly and peaceful. Children are not roaming the corridors or swearing. The headteacher can actually do their job and not have to firefight that classes behaviour. And more importantly- those SEND children have gotten more work done in the past month than in years; I’ve seen their books.

I can’t help look back and the years of play therapy, councillors and educational psychologists wasn’t worth a damn. What those children appear to have needed was someone who was in charge, had a clear set of rules and followed through, and it feels like many modern primary schools aren’t set up to facilitate that.

Having grown up a bit in the environment you describe here (iron first, etc.), I am massively grateful this is not the norm. I am also wondering what kind of SEND the kids had that could be sorted out by giving them a bollocking.

Yes. And the previous two to three generations already are.

Are you allowed to discipline students who don't do the work?

You can try, but they'll do their best to have you out of your job.

Yes, parents are wildly over protective, usually in the wrong ways. Kids are being brought up with no sense that life should not always go their way and so collapse when something happens which makes them uncomfortable. Parents are under pressure to act this way or feel like they are letting their DC down. The kids are under huge pressure and horrible influences through social media. Young people are often a nightmare to manage - I have had young employees seriously tell me that they havent carried out some of the duties of their jobs because 'they dont want to do that' and act amazed when it is explained to them that it is not optional to refuse the parts of the job they least employ.

You forgot to tell us about your solitary 8 mile walk to school, everyday, in the snow, with no coat, from age 5.

Yes and no , I hear a lot from friends talking about their own children like it’s my job to look after them. Talking like they are a toddler when in fact they are late teens even adults it makes me cringe a bit because it’s like let them do x y z they aren’t baby’s . Some parents now are simply just to soft on their dc they don’t want to tell them off teach them how to behave etc . Like someone else said up thread you can’t parent exactly like your parents . My own parents brought me up to have a very good work ethic and if I wanted something I worked for it , I didn’t expect lifts etc but some parenting was lazy like expecting me to look after my siblings or going off to entertain myself all day . Yes it’s made me the person I am today and I certainly don’t rely on anyone but it’s kinda like the old style parenting was once your old enough ie 11/12 you get yourself to school you look after yourself and your siblings and that’s it . I haven’t brought my dc like this as I don’t think they can completely look after themselves all the time and shouldn’t be responsible for their siblings either .

@SquirrelFan

Out of curiosity, how do your children get jobs? My child is frankly unemployable - grouchy, slouchy, makes a terrible impression. Self-harms, has anxiety, has no skills because she's been buried online for two years. I love her, and I do what I can to help her (camhs, trying to set limits, etc) but good lord, she's really not an employer's dream! I guess she's a snowflake...

Maybe being buried in her phone for two years is why she's all these things. Instagram is the worst thing for young girls. No wonder they all have anxiety tbh

I'm seriously concerned about your chosen profession
God help any child/student who ends up with someone so smug, patronising and self righteous as you.

We're all different you know? It helps if people, particularly those who teach future generations, can see that and don't expect everyone to see the world the way they do!

And please urgently educate yourself on the origin and true meaning of the term 'snowflake'
A little bit of homework for you over the weekend.

Funny how those disagreeing with OP can't come up with anything other than abuse. No actual arguments.

@BillMasheen

Shame your parents didn’t also teach you about paragraphs

Boom!!!

On the behaviour of university students point - I taught in universities from 2012 to 2019 and am married to a secondary teacher so we talked about this a lot. I feel really conflicted saying this because it sounds a bit 'mental health isn't real' which I absolutely don't think (as I said upthread I've had major struggles with my own mental health) but the thing that really shocked me was the increasing extent to which students thought their mental health should a) be my major focus, as if my main job was to be an untrained and unqualified counsellor and b) should completely determine what requirements they had to meet to actually get a degree. DH thinks this is just a natural consequence of the same thing happening in schools, slightly earlier. I don't know what the answer is - I don't want to go back to mental health problems being stigmatized and under diagnosed, but I don't think the current situation where such a huge proportion of students cannot cope with the smallest of demands and don't feel they should be expected to try is the solution (or particularly fair).

@Treeoutside

Funny how those disagreeing with OP can't come up with anything other than abuse. No actual arguments.

I've seen plenty of intelligent arguments against what the OP is saying, have you bothered to read the whole thread?

Parenting evolves over time, and so it should. Lots of things change over the years, which is how life should be. I for one am glad we dont still practice medicine like we did 30 or 40 years ago for example, When I started nursing in the 80s we did lots of things that had no science behind them!

Our kids will parent differently again when their time comes - and good for them!