Soft kids generation

[docj]

I learned how to lose... a game, an argument or a fight.

I learned that I wasn't always going to win and that I wasn't always going to be the best.

I also learned that you don't always get a second chance.

I'm not sure that's being taught anymore.

I agree that losing is an important part of "growing up." When we started awarding "participation trophies", we tried to pretend as if no one ever has to lose. Unfortunately, that's not how life is.

 

[NY_Dutch]

Our twin 54 year old daughters are both "46'ers", having climbed the 46 HIgh Peaks in NY ranging from 3820 ft to 5344 ft, some multiple times. The other day they mentioned how glad they've been to see the large number of young folks on the trails the past several years, as well as the influx of younger members joining the ADK 46'ers Club. It's good to hear they're not all sitting home banging on they're phone, tablet, or PC screens.

 

[Isaac-1]

I suspect each generation says something like this about the next, I don't have to look all that far back in stories told by my parents and grandparents to see this. My mother was a child of the depression and grew up on a farm in rural north east Louisiana on the banks of the Ouachita river, for the first 7 years of her life she lived in a then old farm house which had no electricity (this was before rural electrification made it to this area), in fact it did not even have glass windows, just wood shutters. Here father grew up in an even more rural part of the same parish (county to the rest of the states), in an area which is covered in mostly scrub pines and red clay dirt, and was only accessibly by 15 miles of red dirt road up until the 1980's. He was born in 1898, near the middle of about 14 kids, 9 of which made it to adulthood born between 1883 and 1906. He went on to serve in the US Navy in the 1920's aboard the battleship Texas, then worked on building Hoover dam, as well as numerous water towers across Texas and Oklahoma during the depression, before moving back to the area where he grew up and marrying my grandmother, who was his younger brother's widow.

On my father's side of the family my grandmother would tell stories of making 2 day horse drawn wagon trips 50 miles each way with her father and siblings about once per month to buy supplies for the families general store in western Louisiana right at the Texas state line, they did this until she was 11-12 years old at which point the railroad built a line through there town, and from then on resupplying the store was done by railroad.

 

[Edd505]

Mom's right arm served as a seat belt, and you could smoke in a bar.....

And the bank, post office or any where else. We had fire arms in our vehicle and cut class to go hunting or fishing. Time to head in the street lights or barn lights came on. You played with sticks and hit cans to play hockey, and baseball!, might even have a glove.. Then there was the kids raised by the community moms called moms about Johnny doing something wrong and checked that we were really spending the night. You were sent out to get eggs or a fresh chicken, asparagus next to the barn. We had chores and you didn't get paid to do them, you live here don't you? We fell from trees and we got hurt, most of the time not serious. You punched it out with your buddy cause you and he had a fight, back to buddies tomorrow. lots of good to be said about the "old days".

 

[Ex-Calif]

"Kids are all soft today." Said all the boomers sitting behind their PCs in their 5 figure RVs bitching about crappy WiFi in the middle of Bumville National Forest - LOL...

1/ We raised all these kids. Or raised the kids that are raising these kids. Blame yourself if anyone is soft.
2/ I moved rural in January. Trust me, there are no soft farm kids around where I am living. They are out fixing fences, raising livestock and working their tails off as far as I can see.
3/ The millennial I trained to take over my job when I retired in May is a brilliant engineer. He better be. He's gonna be funding my retirement for the next 20 years or so. At 30 y/o does he have my "seasoning?" - Nope. But I was a bit of an idiot at 30 as well. They'll be fine if we get out of the way and let them be.

And, yes. I lived in a house with a wood burning stove and charcoal fired water heater. Party line phone and etc. etc. Do I wanna go back to that? Hell no. That's why we (boomers) invented satellites, cell phones, personal computers, microwave ovens, ATMs etc. etc. etc...

 

[SeilerBird]

He was born in 1998, near the middle of about 14 kids, 9 of which made it to adulthood born between 1883 and 1906.

The worlds first time traveler.

Yeah I really miss the old days too. I miss Nixon, Watergate, the Vietnam war, only three channels on TV, black and white channels, the draft, mono records, car radios and many other assorted things in my life.

 

[BoiseRules]

Well that explains my juvenile antics...

Fixed it for you Tom...

 

[SeilerBird]

Fixed it for you Tom...

Proof positive that they stoop to juvenile antics.

 

[Isaac-1]

while we are fixing things I fixed the 1898

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Not all things were better “back when”.

That's for sure. And those same things persist today - the world has a lot of rough edges.

 

[Ex-Calif]

That's for sure. And those same things persist today - the world has a lot of rough edges.

"Life's tough; Wear a helmet" - Denis Leary

 

[Arch Hoagland]

I believe today's kids have done something more difficult than any of us old-timers....They just spent a year attending school on ZOOM.

That's tougher than just about anything I've had to do....Cut 'em some slack.

 

[Jayflight]

I believe today's kids have done something more difficult than any of us old-timers....They just spent a year attending school on ZOOM.

That's tougher than just about anything I've had to do....Cut 'em some slack.

Well the kids have no problems with spending many of their waking hours in the summer time and off from the school hours with faces stuck in their screens of the phones and games. They cannot even carry on a conversation at the dinner table without checking their phones. Of course I blame their parents, which were raised completely different in my house, but surly changed with the kids controlling the assylum.

 

[ziplock]

divorced parents..............byproduct .............yuck

 

[NY_Dutch]

I believe today's kids have done something more difficult than any of us old-timers....They just spent a year attending school on ZOOM.

That's tougher than just about anything I've had to do....Cut 'em some slack.

As a pre-teen, I spent a year at a remote botanical research station in Namibia with my aunt and uncle. Schooling was a combination of home schooling and classes by radio. That's similar to the way many children in the remote regions of Alaska and Canada were schooled as well. I'm sure modern Internet access has brought a lot of changes to home schooling though...

 

[Skookum]

I wonder how our country would be different if old people stopped disparaging entire generations of younger people on the internet. Isn't there anything better to do?

 

[Oldgator73]

I’m 70 and I don’t think we were any better than my grandkids generation. We used to steal Krispy Kreme donuts from the local department store (the donuts were delivered and sat out front until the store opened) and take a bottle of milk from somebody’s porch and sit in the woods and eat breakfast. Back then 7/11 was open from 7am-11pm. At Christmas they sold Christmas trees. We go after 11pm and take a few trees. My grandkids are 9 and 11; I was their age when we did these things.

 

[Utclmjmpr]

Haven't younger people have any thing better to do than exercise their thumbs on a telephone.??.>>>Dan

 

[Ex-Calif]

I’m 70 and I don’t think we were any better than my grandkids generation. We used to steal Krispy Kreme donuts from the local department store (the donuts were delivered and sat out front until the store opened) and take a bottle of milk from somebody’s porch and sit in the woods and eat breakfast. Back then 7/11 was open from 7am-11pm. At Christmas they sold Christmas trees. We go after 11pm and take a few trees. My grandkids are 9 and 11; I was their age when we did these things.

We used to hang out at the stop and rob when the delivery truck was due. The Coke truck driver would give us free cokes and the store owner would let us trade them for cold ones.

The worst thing we ever did and I still feel bad about it was that in the day folks would put the milk money out with the empty bottles. We harvested some cash one day and never got caught.

Imagine leaving cash on your doorstep these days - LOL...

 

[Jayflight]

I wonder how our country would be different if old people stopped disparaging entire generations of younger people on the internet. Isn't there anything better to do?

Well as kids we looked at ways to make spending money in our spare time long before we had our drivers license. We gathered up a push lawn mower and a gallon of gas and cut yards at the same age as my grandkids, for just an example. We paid our way for the roller rink, bought our own skates and sometimes bought some of the fancier clothes that our parents were unable to afford.

I know other kids their age that would do the same. In my last neighborhood the parents would do the grass cutting as the kids sit inside, absolutely useless. We looked to get hired in community grocery stores when we became of age. Kids worked their way thru college if they wanted to go, even between classes. Nowadays the majority of college age kids have never worked one hour in the private sector before they enter the freshman year. [opps can I say freshman?]

Of course there was the draft which taught you more, including real life skills in the few short years than any college in this country for the same amount of time. You bet some of those lessons stayed with you for decades and you darn sure gave you a better appreciation of what our own previous generations gave us and gave up so we could sit on our butts here and bitch if we want to.

There are differences in the generations from when we were kids. For the families that lived out on farms, it was regular practice that the kids did work on with their parents and learned many skills in the process like fabricating make do farm equipment or patching up tractors.

All these skills were just part of life skills . I guarantee you right now you can't get the average city kid to drive a stick shift vehicle or even know how to check the oil and know what type of oil to buy as they reached the age of 18.

And to boot when you ask the bulk of the up and coming generation to do any of the simple chores like take the garbage out, you get a lot of lip service. And that did not happen in my house without a serious response one time.