It is our job as adults to equip kids with the tools to handle them.
“We don’t help out kids by increasing pressure & playing into culturally accepted falsities.
We help kids by teaching them the value of hard work, commitment, & service, while simultaneously equipping them with tools to handle the inevitable adversities life throws at them.”
-Ray Zingler on X
The world has never put more pressure and stress on our kids than today, yet people still want to put “kids these days” followed by a negative connotation in a box.
But instead of simply throwing the cheap phrase on them and then boasting about how you walked uphill in snowstorms 5 miles both ways, let’s dissect and try to figure out why kids are the way they are these days.
If we know that for the most part, kids are largely products of their environments and what is tolerated within them, we can’t just blindly jump to it being the “kids’ fault” if the way they’re acting is learned behavior.
Kids are smart. They are going to try to take the path of least resistance as any intelligent organism would. And if this path of least resistance is tolerated within their environment (whether the adult likes the idea of it or not) this is a learned behavior that was approved by an adult’s acceptance of it.
Jimmy won’t mow the grass?
Have you shared with him the importance of mowing the grass? Have you led by example? Equipped him with the tools and how to use them? Encouraged him? Held him accountable? Presented and held to adverse consequences if the expectations of cutting the grass are not met?
Or have you barked at him to cut the grass while playing on your phone and then simply call him lazy if he doesn’t do it?
Just like laziness, work ethic is a LEARNED trait.
We’re playing the wrong game.
We sit here and fret over GPA’s, SAT scores, getting accepted by certain colleges, playing on a certain level of ball team, blah, blah, blah.
Meanwhile our kids can’t crank a weed whacker, put in an honest day’s work, or operate an oven. Then they graduate schoolbook smart as a whip but have next to zero financial or physical literacy.
The world is going to kick their ass. As you probably know, the world is undefeated in doing so.
The objective isn’t to help the world out, it’s got its job down pat.
It is the adult’s job to teach them the value of hard work, commitment, and service so that they can better handle what the real world already has coming for them.
