The Fragile Generation: The Self Obsession Craze Ruining Kids.
I’ve been traumatized. There, now you know. So why have I titled a piece “The Fragile Generation: The Self Obsession Craze Ruining Our Kids?” I mean, surely I can’t be one to talk having suffered trauma myself? Well, a long time ago, when I was a child, both my teachers and fellow students were really mean to me. Actually, they were beyond mean. They were vitriolic bullies—the lot of them. When I was taken back to school at the beginning of term (it was a boarding school), I was so terrified of my fellow students and a few particularly cruel staff members that I’d hide in the school loo (washroom), crying until lights out so I wouldn’t have to face them. I put up with that for five long years.
I went back to my school at age 26, and I was so traumatized I cried approaching the town. Yes, I cried, but I cried quietly, to myself, just outside the station, sitting under a tree, unnoticed. I then took a big, deep breath and kept going and visited the school where I’d been so bullied. None of the staff even remembered me, let alone bothered to try. I had been just a kid, and so what. Just one of 450-odd “girls” whose parents paid handsomely for a terrible experience. For a while I was troubled, but then I realized that my trauma was mine. It was, to use a biblical expression, a cross that I had to bear, one that was mine, and I could choose to hold on to it and let it define who I was, or I could let it go. I chose the latter.
The Fragile Generation: The Self-Obsession Craze Ruining Kids and How We Think We Know Trauma.
Every person on this planet has trauma. It is part of life. And if you think you have trauma, then consider Elisabeth Fritzl in Austria, who was held captive by her father for 24 years, raped by him, and forced to give birth to seven children in his basement, imprisoned often in the dark, trying to raise her offspring. She hasn’t committed suicide; she doesn’t emote about her life constantly online. She lives on. Consider the children of Palestine, half-starved, many of whom, if they are still alive, have lost limbs, parents, their extended families, and their home. They could give up, but they don’t. They play in the rubble. They try and live. They are an inspiration because they suffer, yet they cannot be wiped out by Israel’s bombs. Their spirit lives on in their fierce resilience. Life is still a gift, even as many wait for death.
Most of our lives are simply incomparable to theirs, and the same is true for the children in the Congo, Nigeria, and many other places ravaged by our Western rapacious greed. Yet in the worst of these places, children still find joy. And yet here in the West, it seems we are doing everything in our power to strip that natural joy and to gut that natural resilience. Instead, we teach our children to be crippled by life itself and the challenges that it presents, challenges that, in large part and for most people, bear no resemblance to anything more than the regular ups and downs of life. Are there some real tragedies? Of course, and those people may need professional help to move on, but moving on should still be our goal. Yet, we increasingly teach children to stay submerged in their feelings, paralyzed by their emotional trauma.
The Fragile Generation: The Self-Obsession Craze Ruining Kids and What Our Focus Should Be.
Our culture has turned us into naval gazers, wearing each emotion like a badge of honour, encouraging our children to turn their gaze constantly inward. Children are often asked as part of a group at school, “How are you feeling?” “Let’s check in with how everyone is feeling.” Have you ever noticed that the more you check in with ‘how you’re feeling,’ the worse you actually feel? A comment, a rash word delivered to you, invites you to suddenly start to analyze every part of it. You start focusing on it, and it gets bigger and bigger until what may have been just a slight starts to dominate your very being. Children taught to analyze how they feel are encouraged to focus attention not on what they do for others or their accomplishments but rather on how others make them feel.
Ok, so why is that bad, you ask? Shouldn’t some attention be paid to how we feel? Yes, to a point. We all feel. We all have emotions, but they cannot be allowed to rule us. Case in point: The child in a grocery store, knocking all the things off the shelves in a fit of pique, who was finally confronted by a grown-up who tried to stop her, was simply told, “But you don’t know how she’s feeling!” What does that have to do with anything? Can she simply destroy a store simply because she’s feeling bad? Is that really what we want as a society? A bunch of people who think anything goes because they’re feeling mad? And where do your safety and mine intersect with those feelings? Should we be okay if one of those throws hits someone in the head all because a child was having a bad day? How about walking the streets of your town at night, and you happen to run into some guy who decides to rape you because they had a really rough week? Where does it stop?
The Fragile Generation: The Self-Obsession Craze Ruining Kids or why we’re running out of excuses.
It seems to me we have lost the plot. Empathy without accountability is simply acquiescence. When I work with parents and help them with their child’s behaviour, it’s always good to know the ‘why’ of the behaviour, but we just don’t stop there. The ‘why’ can inform us, it can educate us, it can reveal mitigating factors, but it cannot change the desired outcome, which is to stop that behaviour, not to make excuses for it to continue. Society has certain rules that we have to have in order to function. You can’t just steal your neighbour’s car because you think it’s better than yours. You can’t hit Grandma over the head with a pan simply because she’s annoying you and you don’t want to deal with her anymore. There are consequences, so why is there a major push in parenting to be so empathetic as to have virtually no standards at all?
Well-meaning people think that prioritizing their child’s feelings is the key to a happy childhood, but that hyperfocus does nothing else than foster self-entitlement, leaving very little room in that child’s life for others outside of the realm of ‘me.’ Parents aware of the hustle culture face a paradox. They are all too aware of all the social media influencers, the personal branding, and the need for their children to stand out to have a chance in an increasingly competitive world, and so they foster their child’s personal development at the expense of service to others. They believe they are doing their child a favour by being their enthusiastic cheerleader, coach, and often their friend on life’s journey, but children don’t need a peer; they need a parent. They need someone to point out and encourage emphasis on what they do rather than who they are, displaying attributes and character, even if those attributes seem to be ones our society no longer values. They are still the foundations of a life worth living.
The Fragile Generation: The Self-Obsession Craze Ruining Kids and Why We Are Lost.
“Find yourself,” “live your truth,” and “you’re worth it” are all axioms of a society that has lost its way. Ironically, they are often fostered by people who do care, yet they inspire the next generation to practice introspection at the expense of the collective. If the world is only about you, then a whole part of life’s beauty is lost. Caring is a part of the human experience, that is, if it is caring about things beyond yourself. The world is in trouble. Many of us have a feeling in our stomach that things are not right. Only a collective, caring deeply for the world together, its humanity, and all the creatures that inhabit it, can do anything to rescue it. And that change starts with the children.
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