February 15, 2008

What's the matter with kids today?

It depends on whom you ask. I had the pleasure of discussing the topic with some women from the Masonic Home in Union City this week. These ladies have some life experience, let me tell you. The group included a retired teacher and a childcare expert along with others who are from the era when children were seen and not heard.

Incidentally, my own mother is from this period. Her parents expected her to be quiet and decorative. At the same time every afternoon she would take a bath, put on a clean dress and then sit on the front steps to await the arrival of her father. This ritual was not her idea, by the way. It's how things were done. The father was to be spared the sights and sounds of grubby, rambunctious children after a hard day at the office.

For her efforts, my mother would get a pat on the head. Neither of her parents seemed to be terribly interested their daughter's thoughts or her activities. When her little-girl chatter got tiresome, her father would tell her, "You know, an empty cart rattles more than a full one."

With that one careless remark, he was telling her that she had an empty head and that nothing she said was of any interest.

Fast forward 75 years. A mother is walking around Barnes & Noble with her toddler. He is frowning. "Jacob, " says his concerned mother. "you look troubled."

"I AM troubled! says the 3-year-old member of the Me Generation. "I WANT A BOOK!"

It occurred to me as I witnessed this scene that such a child might expect the world to discern and attend to his every passing fancy. This is not a child whose day revolves around the comings and goings of the breadwinner. The only person at the center of Jacob's world is Jacob.

I think the Masonic ladies would have taken this as an example of what's wrong with kids today. They are indulged, they can't imagine something (or someone) more important than themselves, and no desire is left unfulfilled.

Children are not allowed to fail these days. We seem to believe that any setback will damage our children's all-important self esteem. We protect them from hardship and want and inconvenience, all with the best of intentions.

By contrast, the ladies lived through the Great Depression and World War Two and felt themselves stronger for it.

Life's gifts are best appreciated when one has known deprivation. Life's best lessons, they agreed, are learned from failing and trying again.

Both the retired teacher and the retired childcare professional bemoaned modern children's lack of respect for authority-a trend that had ultimately caused them to leave their jobs.

A child who hasn't learned to respect his parents and his teachers ultimately has no respect for himself. And a child who is rewarded for nothing at all never knows the joys of real accomplishment.