I was reading an article from The Atlantic recently entitled “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy-Why the obsession with our kid’s happiness may be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods.” To sum it up, it is saying our obsession with giving our children the happiest childhood, we are not preparing them for the real world or letting them “grow up” so to speak.
While there were things I agreed with and things I disagreed with in this article, it brings up a subject that, as a youth pastor, I see parents facing with their teens daily. I have even had people ask, “What is WRONG with this generation?” While I don’t think there is something WRONG with the whole generation, nor do I profess to have a true answer, I do think the pursuit of happiness for our children definitely plays a huge role.
The more years I spend in youth ministry, the more I see a theme of “Elitism” emerging in teenagers. They know what they want, how they want it, when they want it, and think that their parents should deliver it because that is what “parents are for.” Now, many of you may be reading this and saying, “That’s not how my child is” which may be true, or may be what you are telling yourself because the truth is harder.
The more years I spend in youth ministry, the more I also see a theme of parents not wanting to be “too hard” on their kids or not wanting to be a “helicopter parent.” We want to give our children everything we didn’t have and we want to see them light up when we buy them the next best thing or take them on a better vacation than the family down the street got to experience. There is nothing wrong with wanting a better life for our children. Where we go wrong is thinking that wealth, status, and material things measure a “better life”.
I am constantly amazed at the way teens today are allowed to talk to their parents. I often find myself in a situation where I have just witnessed a teenager berate their parent in public and I sit with jaw dropped waiting for the parent to resist the urge to pummel their child as they dole out a punishment. Instead, more often then not, I see the parent simply look defeated and hand over whatever the child was asking for. I am not far removed from these teens in age, but at 25, I know I am not the only one who came from a household where I would have hated my life had I EVER talked to my parents in that manner.
So the question is not “What is wrong with this generation?” Rather the question seems to be “What is wrong with parenting in this generation?” Are we making life to easy on our kids? Not teaching them to work for things because we are obsessed in preventing them from having to work too hard? Are we creating a whole “Failure to Launch” generation or a generation that we are just setting up to fail on their own?
