This week, many moms are feeling a mixture of pride and grief as their children don their robes and doff their graduation caps. We will then worry as they head off to make their own way in a new, and ever-changing world. Likely, this will be with the same anxiety that I handed the keys to the car for the first time (this week) to our newly licensed daughter to take our car to work by herself. We are proud, but there’s still a nervousness about how they will handle the responsibility.
Gen X did all we could, and yet nothing can perfectly prepare them for all the challenges they will face. The issues are fundamentally the same; they just might look a little different. You might have expressed yourself in your blue eye shadow, acid wash jeans, cans and cans of hair spray. We plastered our identities on our lockers, trapper keepers, and walls of our bedroom, or used our clothing to reveal our vibrant personalities. Our children are no different. They just express themselves on their Instagram story, or whatever social media they prefer.
You have a ‘Zoomer’s’ attention for about 4 seconds before they try to “swipe up” and move on to the next … Wait, which platform are kids on these days? They can have their attention divided between three devices at once. They are techy natives who invented the phrase “just google it”, mainly because they are tired of rescuing their generation X parents from 13 separate Instagram accounts because we keep forgetting the password. Think about it. Pac-Man was born during our childhood. Smart Phones were born in theirs.
Some things do come around. Incidentally, thanks to Etsy’s child, ‘Poshmark, the crocheted toilet seat is apparently making a comeback (Or is that millennials mocking us?). My kids have rediscovered the old home remedies that we tried to make our grandmother forget (We call it DIY now). My daughter came into the kitchen the other day with her hair looking like she had been playing in an oil spill in the Atlantic and explained she had made a hair mask of coconut oil, egg, and honey. My son discovered he likes mixing oatmeal with spinach in a smoothy because “It’s good fer ya!” I looked at him with bewilderment, he said he got the recipe from youtube. If they ask me to buy them castor oil, then I’m going to be concerned for future generations!
Will all of those differences, there are darker worries we likely all have. Gen X’ers and millenials, who largely run media companies, constantly keep us terrified with apocalyptic predictions of doom, pearl clutching reports on government direction and dire current events. It reminds me of Chicken Little announcing that “the sky is falling!”. Sadly the world we have portrayed to them has so alarmed them that for the first time in hundreds of years, the population will actually shrink in their time, because they don’t want to have children.
With all of these changes and concerns I decided to try to get the pulse of the generation in question. Generation Z ranges from high school to being out of college for several years. What issues concern them? What sort of world will they raise their own kids in? Out of curiosity I asked a few of them what advice they had for parents having recently been a kid themselves.
Here is what they said:
-There is freedom and there is anarchy, don’t let your child decide where the line is.
-Don’t feed into letting your kid be themselves’ and then hands off, while they make up what that means.
-Stay involved. It can be hard when things change but don’t write if off just because you don’t understand it. Issues are still mostly the same if you take the time to figure it out. We value your understanding and being present.
-Don’t assume everything is the same as it was when you were a kid. It’s a different world. Also don’t be too hard on them, and don’t expect them to be like you when you were a kid.
-And when they do mess up, cut them some slack and remember what you also did as a kid.
-Let kids make mistakes and learn from them. My parents let me make mistakes and develop my own convictions and opinions. They guided me, but they didn’t live my life for me. As a kid I felt like I was challenged to think for myself rather than just parroting everything my parents said.
-When I was at home, I did what my mom and dad told me. but since I moved on, I have felt like I was equipped to apply scripture and develop my own convictions.
Parents: nothing under the sun is new. Kids still need:
Affirmation
Guidance
Critical thinking
Morality
Spirituality
Discipline
“Start a youth out on his way; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6
They still follow your example, as you followed your own parents, and they followed the example of the parents before that. The world has always been a scary place. There has always been evil and there has always been good. We must remain vigilant.