Why it is not 'Kids These Days', a millennium of child hate

I rue for the days when adults were capable of creating a coherent argument about society today that took into account the reality of society yesterday and predicted something accurate for society of tomorrow. 

I should live so long...

Today, in the facebook parenting group, this piece of tripe

REASONS TODAY’S KIDS ARE BORED AT SCHOOL, FEEL ENTITLED, HAVE LITTLE PATIENCE & FEW REAL FRIENDS

August 18, 2017 

was served up, raw and slimy. I mean, why...?

Go ahead and read it. Take your time.

See?

I completely agree with this teacher’s message that our children are getting worse and worse in many aspects. I hear the same consistent message from every teacher I meet.

Does it look and smell remarkably like any of these gems?

15 Historical Complaints About Young People Ruining Everything

I love this quote:

A pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country, and numerous clubs for practicing this game have been formed in cities and villages...chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body.

Scientific American, July 1859 

Which of course, mirrors this claim:

Kids used to play outside, where, in unstructured natural environments, they learned and practiced their social skills.  Unfortunately, technology replaced the outdoor time. 

You can almost hear them all nodding sagely, in unison ...

... meanwhile, back in reality ...

The study, published Wednesday in The American Journal of Family Therapy, found students in the early elementary school years are getting significantly more homework than is recommended by education leaders, in some cases nearly three times as much homework as is recommended.

and

Children spend 50% more time on school drive than in their parents' day

Yeah... that's all about the evils of video games interfering with all that free time outside...

... and then, about being free:

Since when do children dictate to us how to parent them? ... What good are we doing them by giving them what they WANT when we know that it is not GOOD for them? Without proper nutrition and a good night’s sleep, our kids come to school irritable, anxious, and inattentive.  In addition, we send them the wrong message.  They learn they can do what they want and not do what they don’t want.

Yes, dear. The problem is children these days are doing what they want, instead of playing ... outside ... doing ... what ... they ... ... ... um ... ?

What is 'wrong with kids these days' is that the adults watching them can't think properly. Back in my day, we learned to think before we put our names on mindless twaddle and claimed it was original thought and intelligent discourse ...

Here's what is really happening:

Children today, the kids of digital natives (those horrific Millennials who are about to destroy civilization with all their inclusion policies and international communications and staying-in-touch with virtually every person they've ever met, who never learned to socialize properly, according to their teachers and parents) have in their hands extremely powerful tools, often for most of the day. This enables them to:

• socialize when they are not supposed to, without passing notes in class (Hi, Gen-X and Boomers!), and, incidentally, voluntarily honing their written communication skills
• to look up current, accurate information (remember the card catalogue, that dusty, dated collection of books printed back when all truth was simple and never changed?)
• to both record and report crimes as they are happening, holding criminals accountable and making it clear that even police won't be excluded from this era of constant, private surveillance
• to create their own industries and earn while they learn by sharing what they know and monetizing it through their social networks across the globe (lazy beasts, going around earning money while they're studying, playing, sleeping...)
• criticizing static knowledge, abuse of authority, sexist and senseless policies, arbitrary restrictions and even the place and practices of 'school' as we know it --just as if it weren't some sacred cow developed over a hundred thousand years by Master Thinkers trained for decades in How To Analyze Quality Education Methods... because it isn't.

While these all-seeing and all-knowing teachers (and even the author herself, with her grand centuries-of-personal-experience: 

Clearly, throughout my time as an Occupational Therapist, I have seen and continue to see a decline in kids’ social, emotional, and academic functioning...

... ahem.) are amazingly good at repeating what they heard last and believing whatever they think, they are clearly not good at critical thinking, understanding history, or observing their own world. 

The education world: a mish-mash of cobbled together ideas to free all adults to contribute to the GDP, control the population and stop them thinking they have any right to a voice in public decision-making, to create 'well-rounded' adults (that, at least, is working with their demands for sitting still and drug them if they don't) and copy this iota of that country's system that produces 'better' results (while ignoring the suicide rates, a completely unrelated result no matter how many young adults write 'pressure to get perfect scores' on their notes) ... while ignoring the research that indicates clearly what helps kids thrive (like getting to sleep when their bodies need to, not taking 7am extra-curricular classes so their portfolios will have enough 'roundedness' for Harvard to let them in...) because it's inconvenient to the system that is, really, what our fine lady Victoria calls the first problem:

1. TECHNOLOGY
Using technology as a “Free babysitting service” 

We can't change the hours of school because school is for free babysitting for the normal (like that's real now or ever was) work week. If teens started at 1pm, who would babysit them for the mornings while they sleep according to their circadian needs ... and who would do the 'afterschool' work in their places, if they are in school until 7pm? How can they be taking their younger siblings to school so parents don't have to, if they're sleeping later than the kids' start? 

That can't work... we can't be adaptive to reality, because The School System is ideal ... well, made already ... employs too many people comfortable in their places ... too big to fail... 

Clearly, the problem is parents today being all terrible at parenting ... like always... 

Parents take care to feed their children with wholesome diet; and yet how unconcerned about the provision for the mind, whether they are furnished with salutary food, or with trash, chaff, or poison?

Reverend Enos Hitchcock, 1790 

This is Why the Demand for Attention Must be Met

Editor's Note: This post contains affiliate links. Linda Clement only ever shares links to books she has read and believes are of value. No authors have been harmed in the sharing of these recommendations...




A great deal is written, and worried about, when it comes to attention-seeking behaviour in children. 

A lot of the concerns are a result of the very-disturbing adults we all know at least a handful of, who are examples of why attention-seeking behaviour run amok is so unattractive.


When parents (and onlookers) attribute that adult behaviour to children who successfully attained as much attention as they needed... there is a problem.

One thing that La Leche League taught me long ago was:  

a need met dissipates

a need unmet remains 

Children need attention. They don't want it or demand it or prefer it or brat it up because they're devious, selfish little hellions in need of a smack. They need it.

Like how they need food and shelter and protection from predators and fresh, clean water and shoes.

Well, maybe not the shoes. But attention, they need. 

In the absence of appropriate attention, children are unsafe both physically and psychologically. They instinctively know that they need attention, so when they are not getting it, they devise creative and astonishing methods of acquiring it. 

Often extremely effective creative and astonishing methods...




In the lovely, funny and pointed book about childrearing, Purrfect Parenting, Beverly Guhl points out that children prefer lovely fresh breakfast cereal that's crisp and flavourful, with fresh, chilled milk. When they are starving, they will eat stale old breakfast cereal that's dusty and served with warm, soured milk. 

What they want is the good kind, but they'll take any over none.



When they get none, they do the most remarkable things. Things I have known attention-starved children to do include (but is not a comprehensive list):

• throw an armchair through a (rental house) living room window (he was 5)
• stand on the train tracks to see if the train would kill him (he was 4)
• cut a flower girl dress to shreds with paper scissors the day before the wedding (9)
• gag herself in order to barf in a restaurant (she was 3)
• stand on a kitten (4)
• pick a stranger's baby up by the ears (6)
• sit and then stand on a baby's head (4 years old)
• light a basement curtain on fire (11)

Now, the thing about these amazing feats is that the children weren't angry --they were all acting with a deep concentration and hyper-vigilance about where the parent's eyes were. 

Every one of them smiled when they got caught --sending their freaked out parents right over the edge. But that smile was from the very heart of them: there, it worked.

Whew... relief --attention at last.

When these kids grow up, they'll have the most remarkable set of coping skills imaginable: like a train wreck their lives become the thing of legend --seriously unattractive, but so hard to look away. So hard not to talk about.

If, though, these attention-seeking adults had made eye contact with someone who took them seriously, and reflected their experience back to them and interpreted the extremely contradictory and confusing huge world for them with kindness, generosity and love, they wouldn't be the attention-seeking adults they have become. 


They would be able to co-exist with other equals from a position of being filled --not empty and starving and willing to do anything, sell anything, permit any kind of humiliation just to get looked at for one more moment. Just one more bowl of tooth-breaking cereal swamped with curdled milk in what amounts to a steady diet of it...

Humans need attention. They will get it, anyway they can.