This is an essay from “Ramblings and Rumblings” - if you’re only interested in “Would you like some more help?” you should be able to opt out of these emails in your subscription settings. I’m happy if you stay and read, though, as I write from the heart.
As a father of two, because of my work with teens and as a soccer coach of 4- to 8-year olds, I spend most of my time with kids, and have been for the last ten years.
When it comes to kids and people in general, one of the things I learned is that it’s easy to disapprove of something you don’t know. Most conflicts boil down to not knowing each other or not communicating well, don’t they? So I try to make a point of getting to know current “hypes” and trends, when I hear about them, instead of just concluding that people are dumb.1 Also, I’m fascinated by how society evolves, how people change and adapt and sociology in general.
Take the current trend of “6, 7”. Which one, you say? Congratulations, you have not spent time with (groups of) 10 to 18 year olds in the last weeks.2 The trend apparently comes from a video on TikTok, where someone rates a Starbucks drink 6 or 7, is connected to an NBA player that’s 6”7’ tall, and so on.3 The trend does not make any sense. So why do kids shout it at every opportunity?
It makes them feel connected to this invisible, big group. It makes them feel like they’re part of something bigger. It doesn’t matter what it means. Plus, most adults look lost when they hear it. Knowing something adults don’t is always cool. By the way, the article linked in the footnote suggests the best way of making such a trend uncool: using the words or trend yourself (as an adult).
If I think of similar things I did when I was young, I remember singing a jingle on the bus, with a group of friends. It was from an ad for a number you could call to find phone numbers4. In high school, we had to take the bus to get from one school building to the other. Oftentimes, a teacher would be on the same bus. When we got there and sat down for the maths lesson, our teacher went ape-shit on us5.
How could we be so stupid as to have nothing else in our brains than a jingle from an ad on TV?
Did no one raise us properly, singing like that on the bus?
What was society and the world coming to?
Well, that escalated quickly. Of course, we laughed at the time, as do teens and pupils around the world, when the teacher loses it. “We got to him”.6
I was talking to my sister on the phone yesterday, discussing which movie to show first graders. Toy Story ? They call each other an idiot all the time. Nemo? The mum dies at the beginning.7 Other movies were too scary, too sad, too sexist, too racist8.
What the hell did we grow up on ? No wonder we’re all traumatized!
…was our conclusion. Although in part exaggerated, there’s lots of truth there, but no solution: Movies nowadays are rarely better9, content kids are subjected to on the internet — when parents let them — can be terrible. Shielding them too much is not the solution either. Was there no “winning” before? Is there no winning now?
If you’ve read so far, thank you.
My last point is about consequences back in the day and today. Most kids used to get physically punished in western countries and aren’t anymore (or it’s not talked about anymore)10. It used to be socially accepted and today it’s at the very the least frowned upon, if not illegal. Justly so.
Comparing generations: no matter how strict, if you don’t hit your child you’ll always have one less card up your sleeve (compared to your parents’ or grandparents’ generation) in disciplining your child. Since physical punishment has no proven long-term positive effect11, there was no winning before and there is no winning now. Well, except for the child not being hurt. So actually, big win.
Another kind of consequence that has all but disappeared is collective punishment, which sucked big time. For the rest of the class. Since it was because of me and my friends, sometimes.
So, overall, society often feels like kids nowadays are “worse-behaved” than before and were actively raised better back in the day, but the methods used were wrong and yielded only short-term “results” and behind-the-back behavior.
Okay, great. So what should we focus on? Because some kids are absolutely unhinged and there’s lots of violence in schools and cities. (There always was.)
Let’s focus on our kids’ mental health. Let’s focus on actually being present in our children’s lives. Let’s spend afternoons sitting on the ground in their rooms. Let’s actively enjoy the first four years of their lives, before kindergarten. Let’s teach them things. We’re not getting that time back. What they miss out on before starting school, they will not catch up on for a long time, if ever. Let’s have an actual relationship with them and show interest in them before they’re teens.
Oh, and maybe, just maybe, let’s not give them a phone (or tablet, laptop, tv) until they’re like 13.12
Sometimes, after getting to know these hypes and trends, I conclude that people are dumb. :)
Which is not necessarily always a bad thing.
Yup, feeling “old” as I type this. More like, how much has the world changed.
Not a bad teacher, generally speaking. If I think of the little flask that he drank from during every lesson, that left his upper lip white… I’m gonna have to do some research before passing judgement. DM me if you know what that’s about.
And they’re right - just as it’s ok to lose it sometimes.
Most of the cartoons are so stupid. Go Bluey!
“Although some studies have found no relation between physical punishment and negative outcomes, and others have found the relation to be moderated by other factors, no study has found physical punishment to have a long-term positive effect, and most studies have found negative effects.” from Physical punishment of children: lessons from 20 years of research
and then actually check what they’re doing, ‘cause if you’re waiting for someone to make rules for you, you’re going to have a bad time.
I've never heard of 6-7 until these past couple weeks or so and from this platform. 😅
I feel so old and behind the times, haha.
I remember explaining to my child once what her ‘bad choice’ was, how it affected those around her and why we needed a consequence and my grandmother said ‘it’s so interesting how you explain things to her’ and I thought about how to me it seemed completely normal for my, at the time, 3 year old to understand what was going on but how novel it was to someone from two generations before me.