many millenials (previously referred to as "generation y") need to dial it down a notch. two. three. four wouldn't hurt.
before i tell you why many millenials need to dial it down any number of notches, let me tell you who made them need to dial it down - us. their parents. we created this monster.
we were the first generation who decided to parent kids from the "good job!" school of thought. we thought that rewarding a kid every time he took a breath was a good idea. we were the ones who got all caught up in this "self-esteem" thing. we were the ones who wanted these kids to "think for themselves and make up their own minds" - about damned near everything. what we didn't count on was what was gonna happen if they actually did.
and boy, they did. did they ever.
look, i'm not saying that we shouldn't have given a rat's ass how our children felt. or how life's events - the failures and the successes - impacted them. of course we should have cared about those things. and i'm not saying that we shouldn't have taught them to think for themselves. of course we should have. but i am saying............damn, did we ever go overboard.
we over-killed the kindness. boy, did we ever.
the end result of that excessive pandering to our children's self-esteem is that they now think they're all that. (what, exactly, did we parents think was gonna happen? we can't go tellin' a kid who shows us every scribbly, no-sign-of-talent-here picture he drew that we love the colors and we love the way he used a lot of different shapes and we love the way he used the crayons so creatively and expect him not to think he's all that. and the next van gogh, to boot.)
we can't not keep score in the softball game and hand out ribbons to everybody who bothered to show up (even if they didn't bother to show up every time) and expect to raise humble, tolerant adults. we just can't.
and we just didn't.
many of the millenials view the world in a much more self-centered perspective than we ever did. and many of them, touting this liberation philosophy or that one, think that they are other-centered, not self-centered. they don't even see how high-handed, smugly superior, intellectually arrogant they are. they don't see it!
well, of course they don't. we didn't teach them to see it. we didn't teach them to think how the players who showed up for every practice, worked their asses off (often in the hot sun), and actually hit the ball, ran the bases, and scored the most runs might feel if we give everybody a trophy. we only taught them to think how they would feel if they didn't get a trophy.
and we taught them to demand that the world give 'em one.
not that every millenial is like this, of course. this article is one time, at least, when not everybody is included.
