The problem with Kids today.

[Wolferz]

Too many kids are growing up over protected...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/the-overprotected-kid_n_5001846.html

This article reminded me of my own childhood adventures, trials and tribulations. I'm still thankful that my parents weren't the over protective types who insist on structuring and watching everything a child does 24/7.
My brother and I used to venture far from home and do things that could be considered dangerous in this day and age. But we survived and I think we turned out better for the experiences.

[Red October1984]

Too many kids are growing up over protected...

This article reminded me of my own childhood adventures, trials and tribulations. I'm still thankful that my parents weren't the over protective types who insist on structuring and watching everything a child does 24/7.
My brother and I used to venture far from home and do things that could be considered dangerous in this day and age. But we survived and I think we turned out better for the experiences.

There are many problems with kids today...and this one seems to find it's way into all of them.

Kids need to be taught common sense. When somebody else thinks for you for so long, you lose the skill to think for yourself.

Kids are being raised wrong because the 90's kids are becoming parents now and, let's face it, this new generation of parents sucks. I can see it in my own school and the kids that they produced.

The Senior class a few years back....let's use 2008's senior class. They were a completely different kind of person at age 7 than the 1st grade kids now.

Now, the kids are raised to believe everything is okay, everybody is a winner, you can do anything you want, and the world is a happy-go-lucky place. And if there ever is a problem, you can forget solving it yourself. Find a "trusted adult." If a kid throws a punch on the playground, the other kid is supposed to run away and get a "trusted adult"

Where will this trusted adult be in 30 years? There are very few adults I really completely trust. There's a lot I have faith in...but actually trust, few.

Kids need to get more common sense and fewer Japanese cartoons.

Rant over. It's a topic for which I have a bit of passion.

[Jimbuna]

Never felt I've been overprotective but ever watchful and ready to guide and protect if need be.

My lad was travelling the world at the age of sixteen in a cadetship as a navl officer trainee and I look at him now, 25 years of age and studying for his Chief Officers ticket.

My daughter is almost 21 and in her final year at university so what the future holds for her I'm not yet sure.

Taking all things into consideration I don't think my wifes parenting skills have been bad at all but when out and about I often witness the results of poor parenting.

[Armistead]

I agree, kids today seem about 5 years behind mentally and emotionally than my generation. We are creating an entitled generation that doesn't know what NO means, easily offended and lazy.

One of my peeves is all these suicides due to bullying. Not saying bullying is right, but it's part of a growth process to learn to stand for yourself.

The goal for a parent is to no longer be needed.

[u crank]

The goal for a parent is to no longer be needed.

That is so true. As a child I witnessed a few sad moments. We didn't have grief counselors or a school psychiatrist. We had parents. I survived it. I guess todays parents aren't skilled enough. According to the experts.

[Dread Knot]

I guess it's not surprising given the example the authorities set. Last year the Postal Service announced it was scrapping a line of stamps depicting children in various forms of play such as skipping rope, walking and jogging, dribbling a basketball, etc. The reason? It received “concerns” from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition over apparently “unsafe” acts shown on three of the stamps: a cannonball dive into a pool, skateboarding without kneepads, and a headstand without a helmet .



http://acculturated.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/justmove.png

So if we end up with a generation of soft, obese kids who only want to live in the cozy world of social media, we have ourselves to blame as we slowly eliminate any examples of life ever having been different.

On the other hand kids probably don't even know what a physical letter is anymore, not to mention a stamp.

[krashkart]

Last year the Postal Service announced it was scrapping a line of stamps depicting children in various forms of play such as skipping rope, walking and jogging, dribbling a basketball, etc. The reason? It received “concerns” from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition over apparently “unsafe” acts shown on three of the stamps: a cannonball dive into a pool, skateboarding without kneepads, and a headstand without a helmet .

Good thing there wasn't a stamp depicting a kid climbing a tree without a safety harness. Heaven forbid somebody else try to do the same thing, end up falling out of the tree and learning on the way down to be more careful the next time they're up there. :shifty:

[ReallyDedPoet]

The fact is things are changing, whether we like it or not. The social media, technology obsessed kids of today will be running the show at some point. And when they do their children will be into something totally new. Look at the 60s, the world did not go to hell after that decade. Many of the hipsters became some of the leaders of subsequent decades.

Many of us here at SUBSIM spend quite a bit of time here, posting about various games and other stuff. And not just at the PC, I am posting from a tablet, and have done so via my phone. And I think none of us think anything of it, and why should we, it's a great community!! But our kids or grand kids, etc may look at us a little funny. So before we start criticizing them about being lazy, etc, we should take a look in the mirror.

Whenever I find myself being to critical of my kids or the next generation, I find myself questioning if I have lost touch. As we get older we get more and more set in our ways, which is not a bad thing. We all grow up at some point, we just need to be careful not to be open minded.

At the end of the day the next generation will figure it out : )

[Tchocky]

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

Kids these days have always been trouble

[Sailor Steve]

Kids these days have always been trouble
:yep:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wCXr_6wgns

[Wolferz]

I agree, kids today seem about 5 years behind mentally and emotionally than my generation. We are creating an entitled generation that doesn't know what NO means, easily offended and lazy.

One of my peeves is all these suicides due to bullying. Not saying bullying is right, but it's part of a growth process to learn to stand for yourself.

The goal for a parent is to no longer be needed.

I have seen the same conclusion postulated in regard to kids being five years behind in their emotional development. This seems to be done on purpose in our government run assembly line schools. I feel that this is done for the purpose of producing docile lambs who will fear rocking the status quo boat.

"I never let my schooling get in the way of my education" ~Mark Twain

I didn't either. From the age of six on up I learned things about life on my own through good old trial and error. As my experience grew, I developed a sort of sixth sense regarding situational awareness and danger to my person.
I learned when to hold them, when to fold them and when to get the heck out of Dodge.:huh:
Many kids today lack fundamental problem solving skill because their parents smother them with total control.
One can not learn to succeed without experiencing a failure or two.
I learned how to handle bullies when I was eight. If they won't see reason when you walk away from their taunts, then you sucker punch them.:stare:
Problem solved.:D

I'm with you on that one Armistead.:up: Children need to be left to their own devices. Within reason of course. The parents need only keep a watchful eye and not constantly interfere. The kids are alright on their own.

[vanjast]

I wouldn't say its the kids.. it's the parents that have gone 'moggy', and turned anything into a 'nanny-state'. Protection to a certain point, after which they must fend for themselves.

At least my kids listen to Jimi Hendrix, and other weird musos :haha:
Their music choice is quite cool.

[ReallyDedPoet]

It's also the media and marketing ( mostly adults ) catering to the kids of today. In many cases they have become what has been sold to them. But as mentioned above, they'll figure it out.

[Aktungbby]

Too many kids are growing up over protected...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/the-overprotected-kid_n_5001846.html

This article reminded me of my own childhood adventures, trials and tribulations. I'm still thankful that my parents weren't the over protective types who insist on structuring and watching everything a child does 24/7.
My brother and I used to venture far from home and do things that could be considered dangerous in this day and age. But we survived and I think we turned out better for the experiences.

INDEED I was raised in an era of 'benign neglect'; "go play" was the command imperative from the parents. We did and we figured it out on our own... :timeout: kinda sorta!:O:

[gordonmull]

"Right, that's enough, get out and play!" I can still hear my mother's voice ringing in my ears. By heavens we'd be out and we'd stay out until the holler came in: "Gordon, Paul, DINNER!" Similar cries sounding out right down the street. School sports day we tried our best, the best won and were awarded. I didn't, I was ****e to mediocre at sports. The "everyone has to be a winner" mentality is slowly strangling this country.

Everyone has to get good grades from school, so they lower the bar. Everyone has to go to university, so they lower the bar. I speak from experience, having attended compulsory basic arithmetic classes as a mature student at the beginning of my science degree in 2001. IMHO if you don't have basic arithmetic, let alone decent maths skills, you shouldn't be let into a science course. We learnt those in primary school. But still they do.

In fact, most of my small class were mature students, and at one point we brought it to a member of staff's attention that the general feeling was that we weren't being challenged enough. He told us, to paraphrase him, that the course had to be tailored to the caliber of person that the schools were sending them.

To the unis it's all bums on seats and money, to the schools it's all about the league tables. To the children and young people they are failing, well, it's what they make of it when they can't get a job in a graduate saturated market or when in the skilled or non-skilled markets their seniors deride them for lack of basic skills.

The education system has a lot to answer for here, too.

[Onkel Neal]

So if we end up with a generation of soft, obese kids who only want to live in the cozy world of social media, we have ourselves to blame as we slowly eliminate any examples of life ever having been different.



Yeah, I have to say, who is raising these kids? We are. If they are coddled, it's our fault

[Wolferz]

Yeah, I have to say, who is raising these kids? We are. If they are coddled, it's our fault

It's not yours or my fault that so many parents want their children to live in a safe sterile bubble in a vain effort to keep them safe from any and all harm.
Coddling is really stifling to their natural development and it really needs to stop. Otherwise, we'll have more and more maladjusted adults suffering from gimme gimme syndrome and the plethora of mental illnesses that seem to be chic these days. Where they all sit around comparing which antipsychotic drugs they've been prescribed. Then, there's the occasional shut-in that comes out with guns ablazing because he never learned how to deal with his peers or his problems.

[P_Funk]

I remember my days on the playgrounds in elementary. They had these old swings that we'd all race out to claim during lunchtime. We'd swing as high as we could and see who could leap the furthest. I remember one year the "duty teachers" as they were called really clamped down on that behavior. I remember lots of weird things happening. Suddenly they outlawed Tag because it was a "contact sport" or some bollocks.

I also remember that we would organize wars for lunch hours and would spend our recesses collecting acorns that would be our ammunition. We'd take our ziplock bags for our food, stuff them with acorns and bury them near the chosen battlefield because they'd take them away if we took them into the school. Lunch hour would see us lining up in opposing skirmisher lines and whipping them at each other. It was marvelous fun, and he who collected the green acorns was considered the most dangerous.

Nobody ever lost an eye or broke a leg on the swings. Sadly they replaced those swings with crappy generic baby proofed ones. I remember, nobody clamoured for them again after that. They'd defeated our interest in the name of safety. This was the late 90s so I guess western Canada was taking its time catching up to the supposed playground scare.

One thing I also vividly remember is being constantly bullied and the system being useless at resolving it. Early on I used violence to tell them to bugger off, but apparently thats unacceptable. Instead what happened was they would sit me and my bully down and try to sort it out like we were both equally culpable. My supervision by adults proved to me that they couldn't be trusted and all they did was inflict further torment on me by making mine or my parents' reports of it into more fodder for the bully. "Can't we all get along?" "No, he hates me, stop telling me we should be friends." "You have to resolve this." "Why do I have to do anything? I'm the victim." Their inability to resolve the bullying while simultaneously hampering my own independent desire to defend myself caused me to be a pariah for most of school. That was fun. :yeah: