GENERATIONS FLIPPED
When I was a kid, one saw kids out riding their bikes, and adults were working behind desks. Now, more often, it seems to be the other way around. I find myself asking, “Who is the more grown-up of the two? Who is the more mature?”
This is of course only one small example of a much larger phenomenon. My late mother said it best: “Today’s parents have abdicated.” She meant that they no longer discipline their children, and they insist that they, the parents, have to have it all: the best house, the best car, the best career, the best outside pursuits, the best computer, the best TV, etc. And then, instead of spending time with their children, really keeping closely in touch with them, and getting to know them as the lifelong companions that they have the potential to be, the same parents shoo the kids out of the door and into a variety of outside “time-consumers,” so that they, the kids, can have the “best” of everything as well. Today’s parents and children just can’t bear to miss out on anything…except for the one thing that really matters: the precious, irreplaceable parent-child relationship.
Priorities are now entirely backward. Many parents are more concerned that junior excel in…soccer…whatever…than have a good relationship with his dad…or mom. And this is the likes of which is raising our next generation???
But there is hope. I met a young lady named Wendy whose parents actually criticize her for attentively, strictly disciplining her own very small children. Wendy retorted to her parents, “If only you had spent more time with me, and strictly corrected me as well, maybe I wouldn’t be the mouthy jerk that I am. Well, my kids are not going to be mouthy jerks.” I suppose that I’ve answered my own question from the first paragraph: Wendy is clearly more adult than her own parents. A sad state of affairs, to be sure, but Wendy, and others like her, give me hope for the future.
