"Kids these days" threads...

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

There really do seem to be a lot of threads in the Lounge that can be summed up as "What's the matter with kids these days" (sorry to those of you who will now be humming that tune all day). So let me ask you - are kids these days any worse than any other kids in "those" days? Sure, you might not like their clothes, or tattoos, or lack of respect for whatever, but don't you sometimes feel like maybe we're just repeating the crotchety thinking that characterizes every aging generation? Just as they are repeating the rebel-without-a-cause thinking that characterizes every coming-of-age generation?

Just pondering... [huh]

 

[Rosie]

There does seem to be a lot of

as of late. Every generation does something the others don't approve of. They're no worse/better than we were. When I was a teenager, I wore the hugest pants I could find and the biggest earrings you'll ever see on a human being. Sometimes, I wore two sets of the biggest earrings you'll ever see on a human being, at the same time. I wore big boots (timberlands and Karl Kani boots respectively) and, I hate to admit this, I even had a two finger, high riser ring (the kind of ring that is so tall, it sits up off the fingers). My parents HATED it, I thought I was cute. I then went through this phase where I wore lipstick that was almost black and became this kind of ethnic/hip hop/goth/hippie. Was I tacky looking? More than likely, but, I was a kid and that's all apart of growing up. You go through phases, evolve, see what you like, what suits you best.....[huh]

 

[Baron Kurtz]

This has been the basis of my mantra during my time on the lounge.

People seem to have an unrealistically angelic recollection of their own childhoods.

bk

 

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

This has been the basis of my mantra during my time on the lounge.

People seem to have an unrealistically angelic recollection of their own childhoods.

bk

What has been the basis, crotchety-ness or remembering accurately your childhood?

 

[PrettySquareGal]

They are different, but it's the adults that are to blame

Generally and statistically speaking, kids are more obese ("The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. Sixteen percent of our children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 years of age are considered overweight." http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060627/LIFESTYLE/606270301/1024) and more violent. Cops in schools was almost unheard of back in my day. They are also overmedicated- too many kids put on things they don't need and the side effects for which are poorly understood long term. (http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/issues148a.shtml)

 

[PrettySquareGal]

What has been the basis, crotchety-ness or remembering accurately your childhood?

If you never got caught, it's not on record and doesn't count.

 

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

If you never got caught, it's not on record and doesn't count.

lol So the picture of me from when I was 8 or so in a day-glo green shirt with flourescent pink Micky Mouse, day-glo orange shorts, and a pink hat is on the record? CURSES!

 

[Baron Kurtz]

What has been the basis, crotchety-ness or remembering accurately your childhood?

Sorry. My mantra has been: Things are no better or worse than they were. It's just different. Some things got better, some things got worse. We have issues past generations didn't and vice versa. People are people are people are people are people. Time changes very little of the fundamental nature of humanity (and especially so short a time as 70, or so, years)

bk

 

["Doc" Devereux]

To a certain extent yes. I think it's inevitable that a lot of people who hold a fondness for times past may not approve of everything that happens today, and I know for a fact that I don't. What interests me is the manner in which we express this.

There are a lot of people who like to blend the old and the new, and I'm one of them. I wrote an essay recently about the way that the Cyberpunk movement has changed in the twenty years since William Gibson wrote 'Neuromancer' (an old-fashioned hard-boiled novel if ever I read one), and it brought home to me that one of the joys of the twenty-first century is that I can ride a fifty year-old bus to a brand new radio studio in an eighty year-old building, wearing a suit designed seventy years ago while discussing the future ramifications of bioengineering legislation with a friend on the other side of the planet, and nobody bats an eyelid except one young lady who stops to complement my hat! International borders, to quote Bruce Sterling, "...they're like speed bumps." and communication technology which enables many things of which many members of this board would most certainly disapprove (and a few that even I think are beyond the pale) makes our conversation possible. Progress has ever been a double-edged sword.

We may not like the way the world has turned in every way. I'd like to see more manners, mutual respect and free-thinking for a start, with a return to strong basic education, a better-inculcated work ethic and sense of self-discipline. But I accept that some of the rubbish has had to come with the improvements. As global culture has opened up, elements of various societies have entered our own - including 'tribal' style tattoos on various parts of the body. This has happened throughout history: look at classic Chinoiserie and the portraits of the early nineteenth century for a couple of fine examples, and now some those elements have become commodified and subsumed into the mainstream. They will pass into history just like the afghans and kaftans of the seventies. I would suggest that perhaps as the world has changed, people have become less sure of identity than ever before: we do not follow our parents into their professions, we move our lives thousands of miles from where we grew up with little inconvenience, people whose grandparents where barely literate are earning doctorates, and so on. Nowadays, we must find our own identities for ourselves and I see no difference between someone who chooses the rave culture as the place they belong, or someone who chooses to join a monastery, and myself as I check email on my palmtop in a club playing '20s dance music with a Bellini at my elbow. We find the lives that meet our needs, and our stylistic choices are no more or less relatively valid than anyone else's.

The whole darned thing rolls in cycles: it always has, and hopefully always will. We should celebrate the fact that we can take such fantastic and beautiful influences from the past and use them to shape our own lives, in fact we should be grateful for that. There are a whole pile of people out there who have the same reaction to the things we enjoy that we do to their pleasures. I would suggest that the greatest advance of the last seventy years has been in tolerance, and if we flavour that with some old fashioned manners and a touch of grace then who knows what we might achieve in our own little corners of the world - and maybe further afield.

Gosh, that was longer than I expected it to be!!!

 

[cherry_bomb]

Generally and statistically speaking, kids are more obese ("The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. Sixteen percent of our children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 years of age are considered overweight." http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060627/LIFESTYLE/606270301/1024) and more violent. Cops in schools was almost unheard of back in my day. They are also overmedicated- too many kids put on things they don't need and the side effects for which are poorly understood long term. (http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/issues148a.shtml)

I couldn't agree more!! But then we also have to realize that there is a significant population increase adding to this. People have been overweight and violent for thousands of years but the percentage is up due to the population being greater.

Not to mention- as you stated- their all so medicated. And you can't forget how numb people are these days. Violence is brocast as entertainment- music, television, movies... I remember when my parents wouldn't let me watch Bugs Bunny cartoons because they were too violent. I hate to think of all the things I'm going to have to deter my future children from.

And that leads me to wonder about the parents. Do they tell their kids not to smoke? drink? do drugs? stop overeating? control what their entertainment intake is? Or do they simply rely on someone else to raise their children? Teachers can't instill the fear that teaches children right from wrong! So who's doing it? I feel that this increase isn't just the childrens fault, but blame lies also w/ the parents for allowing it to happen!

 

[Rosie]

Generally and statistically speaking, kids are more obese ("The percentage of young people who are overweight has more than tripled since 1980. Sixteen percent of our children and adolescents ages 6 to 19 years of age are considered overweight." http://dnj.midsouthnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060627/LIFESTYLE/606270301/1024) and more violent. Cops in schools was almost unheard of back in my day. They are also overmedicated- too many kids put on things they don't need and the side effects for which are poorly understood long term. (http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/issues148a.shtml)

Children being obese is not altogether the faults of parents. Granted, if a parent is feeding their child McDonalds and fast food all of the time and not encouraging good eating or exercising habits then, fine, they are at fault. However, we as Americans don't seem to realize the amount of junk that is being put into our food, growth hormones, all kind of icky things non of us even wants to think about. Our FRUIT has codes on it to distinguish whether or not it has been genetically enhanced in some way for goodness sake. ALL of this takes it's toll or has a negative affect on some people, it has to. Other than obesity, has anyone seen the size of children these days? Other than the obese/overweight children, look at the bodies on some of these little girls once they hit puberty, it'd disturbing.

 

[Absinthe_1900]

This has been the basis of my mantra during my time on the lounge.

People seem to have an unrealistically angelic recollection of their own childhoods.

bk

I get a kick out telling my friend (with two very small children) that one day his kids are going to be doing the things we used to get away with.

 

[Viola]

Children being obese is not altogether the faults of parents. Granted, if a parent is feeding their child McDonalds and fast food all of the time and not encouraging good eating or exercising habits then, fine, they are at fault. However, we as Americans don't seem to realize the amount of junk that is being put into our food, growth hormones, all kind of icky things non of us even wants to think about. Our FRUIT has codes on it to distinguish whether or not it has been genetically enhanced in some way for goodness sake. ALL of this takes it's toll or has a negative affect on some people, it has to. Other than obesity, has anyone seen the size of children these days? Other than the obese/overweight children, look at the bodies on some of these little girls once they hit puberty, it'd disturbing.

a) Isn't that the normal function of puberty? What am I missing here?[huh]

b) My parents didn't feed us kids McDonalds all the time, or more than twice a month at most. Too broke. Not much sugar cereal either. But we did eat a LOT of rice and noodles to "stretch" the meals. And pasta and rice all the time make for "solid" kids, and that's what we were. Chunky. Not double-chinned fat (thanks, no Nintendo!) but definitely rounder than we should have been.

c) Right with you on the chemicals. Fresh salads and meat are expensive enough, the prices on organic stuff is insane.

 

[Twitch]

My kids are in their 20s and 30s now and I could never really notice any major difference in them and the kids/young people of my generation.[huh]

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't have kids of my own, so my connection to modern youth culture comes for the most part from my nieces and the neighborhood kids -- and I think the main difference between the kids I know nowadays and the kids I knew when I was one myself is that today's kids seem far more bitter and cynical -- even though they have much more in the way of *stuff* than any kid I knew back in my own childhood.

The idea of a teenager getting an allowance of any amount was unheard of when I was a teen, at least in the environment where I grew up -- if you wanted money, *any* money, you got your butt out and worked for it. Now, I see my 15 year old niece being handed $30 here, $50 there, for no reason at all that I can fathom, and I see her throwing it away on foolishness -- and the result is that she's far more cynical than I ever could have been. She seems to live in a culture where people exist to be manipulated for whatever can be gotten out of them, and she and her friends seem to take pride in their ability to do that -- and the more I think about that, the more it upsets me. What kind of adults will these crass, lazy, spoiled, materialistic kids be in ten years?

 

[Senator Jack]

Funny, the kids don't annoy me as much as the adults do these days. I guess it's because I have very little to do with them. Yeah, they're loud, rude, obnoxious, self-centered, and poorly dressed, but so are the adults who should know better.

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Paisley]

I must live around the most polite teenagers in the world. The girls who work at Jamba Juice are always pleasant and polite--two of them even complimented me on my hat and my blouse last weekend. The teenage boys where I dance are usually great leads if they've had a few lessons. They tend to be gentler than the older men (they don't squeeze my hands or jerk me around). My best guy friend often dances with teenagers there, too, and he thinks they're wonderful. My father is associated with Job's Daughters (an affilite of the Masons) and the girls prayed for him before his recent surgery.

Anytime someone is rude to me, it's almost always some old woman.

 

[dr greg]

kids not all to blame

I was recently at my sister's house. It's in a leafy suburb, quite gentrified. A friend of my nephew was there and it was time for him to go home. His mother drove over to pick him up...he lives about 1/2 A MILE AWAY!!!!! They were too scared to let a 15 year old boy walk home at 6pm just on dusk. This is not some violent slum, but a respectable part of town where houses are worth 400 grand minimum, and there are more police patrols than Soviet Russia...unbelievable stuff, how are they supposed to learn independence..at that kid's age I was travelling alone across the deserts of the outback. No wonder they only play football on screens..their bloody mummies won't let them out...God help us.

 

[Lady Day]

Kids are what their parents make them, and if parents want to make their kide their friend, then that is what they will be.

Across all generations people often say that kids dont have respect for adults, but today more and more parents I know want to be their friends buddy instead of parent. I see so many arguments where an 11 year old argues with their mom about why they should not get them that $300 game system. What!?

That is what singes my rump these days. Kids arnt afreaid of their parents anymore. I dont mean the "Im gonna hit you" afraid I mean the "I odnt have to listen to you cause if you decipline me Ill call someone".

Also technology has made kids have their own world where parents just dont want to learn about it because they feel it's 'over their head'. If you are afreaid of what you dont want to learn, then dont get mad when it gets out of control.


LD

 

[nightandthecity]

I must live around the most polite teenagers in the world. The girls who work at Jamba Juice are always pleasant and polite--two of them even complimented me on my hat and my blouse last weekend. The teenage boys where I dance are usually great leads if they've had a few lessons. They tend to be gentler than the older men (they don't squeeze my hands or jerk me around). My best guy friend often dances with teenagers there, too, and he thinks they're wonderful. My father is associated with Job's Daughters (an affilite of the Masons) and the girls prayed for him before his recent surgery.

Anytime someone is rude to me, it's almost always some old woman.

I usually avoid these threads. I said my piece in the first one I came across ages ago. They do get a little repetitious.

But anyway, for the record, your experience is pretty much my experience. The kids I meet are mostly polite and almost too well behaved. My own kids give me very little trouble. The kids in the street are great.

Too many people mistake the tabloid press for reality. Nothing new there either.