Talkin' Bout My Generation (and the one after)

I had breakfast this morning with my daughter and son-in-law.  We talked about Sara's job, how best she could voice some concerns she has at work, how the kids' honeymoon went, and then somehow got on the subject of education (or lack thereof).

Sara recently had the pleasure of attending an event where the speaker was Madeline Levine, who does extensive research on why teenagers from affluent families are experiencing epidemic rates of emotional problems.  This prompted a lengthy discussion about over-achieving students, parental pressure to do more, to be perfect, and the tendency of parents, beginning with my generation of parenting, to fill a child's every waking moment with educational and extra-curricular activities.  At one point, Sara asked me if I am "ok" with the notion that Alec (my son) may never graduate from college.  I thought about it for a moment and said, truthfully, that if he is happy, I'm fine with it.  He has a very responsible, stressful, low-paying job, and he excels at it.  My 21-year-old man-child has, in one month, taken a retail store in a rural area to a point where he has increased their phone sales by about 700%  Yes, I did the math right; I may be just a dumb high-school graduate, but I can do the math.  Seven.  Hundred.  Percent.

I told Sara that, in days of yore, I had two pieces of great advice for first-time parents:  

1) Never buy your child a blankie that you cannot easily replace at WalMart or Target.  Otherwise, you'll end up with a 2-year-old who is walking around with a dirty, ragged, disgusting, smelly blanket that you can't even wrestle away from him/her to throw in the washing machine.  Always have a lot of backups.  Wash them all equally, so the silly kid can't tell the difference.

2) Someday, you will feel like taking your adorable infant to Macy's, going to the top floor, and throwing the squalling bundle of flesh down the elevator shaft.  It WILL happen.  When it does, remember that feelings are OK - it's actions that are crimes.  So, it's alright to want to do the tossing; it's NOT quite so OK to actually toss.

Now, I add a third piece of advice:

3)  At any given point in time, allow your child to be involved in ONE extracurricular activity - soccer OR piano OR Gymboree OR jujitsu OR junior Einstein science camp.

On the whole, my generation has raised a passle of kids who cannot decide how to do one damned thing for themselves.  They have been fed, showered, entertained, scheduled, mollycoddled, driven to school, driven to practice, driven to piano lessons, until we as parents are driven to tears.  When I was a child, I spent probably three solid weeks of afternoons and weekends in Felicia Morrow's backyard, the two of us (sometimes four, if joined by Markie and Carla Morrow) with spoons determined to dig far enough to get to China.  We entertained ourselves!  I cannot once remember trudging into my mom's kitchen and whining that I was "bored" if she didn't fill every waking moment of my time with some planned activity.

Now, there are students whose parents call to drop their kids' college courses for them; parents who decide via phone photo texts which pair of shoes their kid should buy; parents who call or text their 20-something children multiple times a day and expect an immediate response.  HELLOOOOOOOO...you are raising a generation of adults who cannot wipe their own noses (or, probably, arses).  But they have first-rate expensive educations that also somehow never taught them how to write out a rent check.

So yeah, I am fine with Alec never going to college.  In fact, I am finally fine with *my* never graduating from college.  I look at my kids - one married, one not; one college educated, one not; one living in a big city, one not - and I realize that they couldn't be more equal in my eyes.  And, joy of joys, I couldn't possibly love either of them one iota more.

So please, please, people - give your children a break.  Teach them to have fun, teach them how to tie their shoes, encourage them to be all they can be, then support them every step of the way when they don't take the exact path you may have chosen for them.

Oh yeah, and stop calling them every day - they need some time to learn to fend for themselves!  They will still call when they need you, but at least it will be for work advice and possibly a food preparation question, rather than to ask you to send them money for rent because they spent all theirs on WOW server memberships.