Parents, step up

 Like every generation before us, we bemoan the current state of the younger generation.

And like every generation before us, it's our fault.

Go back a couple generations to those known as the "Silent Generation," and you find a group of men and women who grew up with a focus on work. Their parents knew the struggle of the Great Depression and the Great War, and the Silent Generation was taught to rely on themselves and their families. These are the ones who "walked uphill both ways" to school, the ones who often dropped out of school to work and help take care of the family.

They grew up and had kids, and many of them wanted to make things better for their kids. After all, their parents were hard on them, so they don't want to be so hard on their kids. The Silent Generation had to work hard, often missing out on the small joys of childhood because of the family responsibilities they had to take on, so they wanted to make sure life wasn't as hard for their kids. So the "Baby Boomers" came along, raised by parents who made sure their kids had a better childhood, then learned to work as teenagers. Most of this generation had jobs through high school, but they weren't relied on quite as much for paying family bills.

The Boomers, like all teenagers, thought their parents were too hard on them. So they decided to take a step back from being so controlling. They started asking their kids for their input into "family decisions." Working during the school year? How about a trade for just a summer job? They let their kids make more decisions, stay out later, have more "recreational time." They still understood the value of hard work and competition, so they pushed their kids to compete in anything and everything.

The Boomers raised Gen X , who--as is the nature of everybody's kids--thought their parents got this whole parenting-thing wrong. With this generation came the idea that competition was bad and that hurt feelings were unacceptable. Kids who grew up saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," went on to raise kids with the idea that hurtful words were the end of the world. Instead of competing in sports, their kids played ballgames where nobody was allowed to keep score and everybody got a trophy. The generation who grew up having "Family Meetings" realized that they hadn't been prepared to make adult decisions as kids, so they chose the route of "Helicopter Parent," hovering around their children at all times, not allowing them to make any decisions.

That brings us to the Millennials, the generation raising kids today, Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Raised in a world where hurt feelings were seen as cruelty, this generation is making sure nobody ever says a cross word to their children. No one else is allowed to correct them, not even authority figures (like teachers) who have always been respected in the past. Instead of teaching kids how to take responsibility, Millennials are teaching their children that nothing is ever their fault. Instead of teaching truth, they are telling their kids that we don't really have a definition of truth... your truth is whatever you feel like, and anyone who disagrees with you must hate you.

Unfortunately, I'm part of the Millennials. My generation is failing those who come next, the kids who are growing up in a world of false reality, lies called truth, and a total brush off of responsibility. We are raising confused kids and playing along with their confusion, making them think it is "loving" to affirm someone's dangerous, ruinous delusions. We are setting our children up to fail, then we are wondering why they do exactly what we pushed them into. Kids who never had to deal with the consequences of their actions in high school--who never had to honor deadlines, could redo assignments as many times as they wanted, had assignments shortened, tests read to them, and answers given to them--are going to college where (for now, at least) professors are still able to actually teach. These students are failing out of college the first semester, and nobody seems to understand why. Kids who have gone through their lives with no rules, no responsibilities, no guidelines, and no supervision are making decisions that ruin their lives and the lives of people around them, and for some reason my generation can't understand what went wrong.

So I'm talking to my peers when I say this: Parents, it's time for you to step up.

• Set boundaries for your kids.
• When they do something wrong, make them face the consequences.
• Stop blaming other people for your kid's failures.
• If your child doesn't do an assignment and gets a zero, it isn't the teacher's fault. In fact, back up the teachers at home. Grades that aren't up to your child's abilities? Your kid should lose privileges at home.
• Put limits on screen time, then enforce them.
• Refuse to go along with delusions.
• Don't support bad decisions.
• Stop coddling teenagers when it's your job to raise them to be responsible men and women in just a few short years.
• Teach them the importance of responsibility.
• Show them the value of truth and the danger of lies.
• Make sure they understand that "progress" only matters if it is headed in the right direction.
• Take them to church.
• Make them do chores.
• Set high expectations.
• Teach them to be respectful of others, then expect that behavior.
• Show them that they are supposed to do the right thing, even when it's hard.
  
  
  We've let things go too far to think we can fix everything, but maybe we can still teach the next generation enough that they will do better than we did. We should fall on our knees, ask God's forgiveness for how we've failed our kids, then rise up and start trying to set things right.