Not Unmotivated...Demotivated iii | a small idea from Raising Adults

Since so many kids grow up demotivated by the conviction that adults 1) don’t expect much from them and 2) seem unlikely to do do much that truly helps them, our course is almost obvious.

Give them something to do. Just because there are no cows to milk doesn’t mean we can’t give our children legitimate work to do—work that keeps us up late or gets us up early. And there’s plenty of that to go around—am I right, ladies? Somehow all those labor-saving devices we introduced since the 50s yielded longer work weeks and a superabundance of household duties. Why in the name of all that’s efficient would we fail to train and empower younger citizens to help with that work? If we let the darlings earn their keep, they’ll love us for it.

But we have to give them the right stuff to do. And the right stuff means helping kids learn to accomplish age-appropriate tasks. 

Take Science Fairs. We all know Roscoe didn’t make that cold fusion power converter. In fact, by your red-rimmed eyes, we can tell you stayed up all night working on it yourself. Either that or you have a nasty case of pinkeye. Why? To launch his career in the hard sciences? So everyone who knows you’re Roscoe’s mom will be proud of you? Who are we kidding?

Over-achieving is generally meaningless—more about appearances than function. Our children need to perform meaningful work. I mean they really need that. And meaningful work is not that hard to find. It’s right in our own homes and requires a minimal investment of brain capital to develop. If you’re not sure where to begin, start with the allowance.

Stop giving allowances. Really. I mean, what’s that about? Does someone give you an allowance just for getting out of bed in the morning? And even if someone does; is that a good thing? 

Not Unmotivated...Demotivated ii | a small idea from Raising Adults

Something has to give.

A lot of young folk are less than enchanted by the script they were handed: 

We don’t expect much from you, just try not to cause too much trouble, okay? We’re trying to figure out how to get you into the asset column but, frankly, at this point you’re a liability. Which is not to say we don’t appreciate your disposable income. We are not ungrateful and if, from time to time, we fail to express our appreciation it’s only because we’re caught up in devising new, better ways to get your money. So, for now, just leave it on the counter and please don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

I Buy, Therefore I Am? The message is a disconnect for lots of young Americans: If that’s all you think I’m good for...well that sucks.

For the record, the young sometimes exhibit a lamentable capacity to live down to generational expectations. Back in the day, when he was a high school senior, my friend Brian said: “Lazy, disaffected, drug doin’, MTV watchin’, video game playin’ snots?’ Okay, we can do that.” When the core message from the next generation up is get in line, stay in line and, by the way, make sure you color inside the lines, simply checking out may seem pretty appealing. And that’s one version of how it looks to the people who monitor what Americans values most closely: the Advertising Industry. 

America’s marketeers characterize young people as a moving target, flighty, unpredictable, difficult to reach (which is of course how advertisers try convince big bidnez that they, the tastemakers, are necessary and worth every penny). But it’s not all hype. Look how the pop music business was forced to adjust to ever shrinking clusters of listeners. It’s not that there are fewer listeners—Millennials outnumber Boomers, and Boomers, as well as Xers, still listen to music—it’s that the marketplace is splintered into dozens of mutating genres, none of them destined to be the Next Big Thing on the scale of the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, or Michael Jackson. I am not invested in the megastars of yesteryear (I, too, am part of the problem for the recorded music industry), so I make no qualitative judgment when I say there is no Next Big Thing. I’m simply talking about sales. Michael Jackson’s Thriller became the biggest album of 1983, selling more than 15 million copies and going on to become the biggest selling album of all times.* As a point of comparison, the best selling album in 2013, Justin Timberlake’s 20/20 Experience, sold around 2.4 million copies it’s first year.** Add to that the disruption of digital and streaming content and it’s plain that the music business will never return to what it was. Whether you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it is undeniably a thing.

"How is that fair?" | Louie C.K. on the world in which we raise daughters to womanhood

Advisory: Strong ideas expressed in strong language

we've seen worse | John Green on myths of doom

The author of the very fine The Fault in Our Stars on why there's hope for poor nations and their people.

in the wind | tweets in the space ending 05.10.14

Not Unmotivated...Demotivated | a small idea from Raising Adults 
http://jimhancock.blogspot.com 

new lows | US teen pregnancies, abortions + birthrate still dropping http://bit.ly/1kNeVpU 

Are US 12th-graders making progress in math + reading? http://1.usa.gov/1ovMlvu

selective outrage | Benghazi, the Bush Administration + the failure of American intelligence http://jimhancock.blogspot.com

Not Unmotivated...Demotivated i | a small idea from Raising Adults

Waiting. I’m not just sitting here. Doing nothing. I’m waiting. Waiting for something worth doing. I’m not self-absorbed. I’m introspective. I’m paying attention. I’m watching. Listening. Waiting for something meaningful. I’m not lazy and I’m not unmotivated. Demotivated, maybe. Under-challenged, certainly. Sorry, but I’m just underwhelmed by shallow dreams. Unimpressed by meaningless ambition, colorless relationships, broken promises. Slacker (?!) Yeah, right. Show me one ideal worth dying for. Let me glimpse one thing worth living for. Do that and the wait is over. Ask me a big enough question and I’ll answer with my life.

Waiting is the text of a short film I wrote for a gathering of 20-somethings. The organizers wanted a motivational piece; something to kick-start the last hours of a conference on Change.

The movie was well received by the audience. Not so much by the Boomers who paid for the event. In fact, the Deep Pockets were disenchanted with the whole gathering. My assignment came from people who organized the conference, not those who underwrote it, so this is just my opinion, but I think the older folks were working on a plan to recruit and co-opt those 20-somethings into their  political vision for the future.

I imagine you recall, co-optation from first-year sociology. No? Well, no matter, I saved my notes: Co-optation is the practice of recruiting potentially troublesome, usually non-formal, leaders into management before they incite discontent in other workaday employees over low pay, shoddy manufacturing, dangerous working conditions...whatever. It’s based on one of the oldest known business principles: If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em. 

But those darned kids! It didn’t take long to see the young men and women at this conference weren’t interested in being co-opted. The conference was supposed to be the pilot for a nationwide series of events. Didn’t happen. After a day of watching and listening to the concerns of these young Americans the mission was scrubbed. 

I wish I could say this is the only time I’ve seen this kind of thing.

in the wind | tweets in the space ending 05.03.14

sophisticated innocents iii | a small idea from Raising Adults http://jimhancock.blogspot.com 

sophisticated innocents iv | a small idea from Raising Adults http://jimhancock.blogspot.com 

Yik Yak: “I probably heard about 10–15 nasty things...some of which I couldn’t even finish reading” http://thecut.io/1nzyB5l

think about it | How Not to Talk About Purity http://bit.ly/S6BEFu h/t Paul Martin 

high-control parenting | a small idea from Raising Adults 
http://jimhancock.blogspot.com 

What! South had highest % of kids on meds for emotional or behavioral difficulties in 2011-12 http://1.usa.gov/1nN1Y4j

Stupid Kids Today | Watter's World v Tad's Turf | Colbert hearts O'Reilly
http://jimhancock.blogspot.com

high-control parenting | a small idea from Raising Adults

Around the household, High Control is not the opposite of Out-of-Control.

High Control says no before the question is finished. There’s nothing to talk about, really; the rules are clear. There’s no room for interpretation because there’s no need for interpretation. If a child can’t grasp that, he certainly can’t be trusted to operate outside the rules now can he?

Controlling is neat, clean, and counterproductive. A child who perceives his parents are too controlling—especially if he thinks the control is hostile—tends toward resistance, aggressiveness, destructiveness, acting out sexually, and a bit of his own hostility.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying High Permissiveness is any better. For reasons that may or may not be obvious to a child, the permissive adult sets no boundaries. 

To be sure, it’s hard to find an adult who’ll admit she doesn’t set boundaries. I set limits, she’ll say. The kids just ignore them. Reminds me of the No Trespassing signs where I hunted small game with my boyhood pals. The signs were posted on barbed wire fences which we figured were there to keep cattle in—not to keep us out. 

So we climbed most of those fences. But not all. We learned which signs were for real by the consequences attached to being caught on the wrong side of the fence. 

Children who believe their parents are too permissive feel out of control in a different way than those who believe their parents are too strict. A child in overly permissive circumstances is likely to be manipulative, disrespectful, unmotivated, excessive, and unable to draw boundaries between herself and others.

Permissive__________|__________Controlling

sophisticated innocents iv | a small idea from Raising Adults

Most kids are equal parts Sophisticate and Innocent—except when they’re not. There are pristine moments when children seem completely, achingly unspoiled. Other times they appear as hard as slum lords. Been there, done that, hated it, bought the t-shirt just to be ironic. This can be awfully confusing for parents and other adults who care. And even more confusing for kids with a foot in both worlds.

Trying to protect the young from exposure to the world they live in is about as useful as putting a wetsuit on a dolphin. It’s too late; they’re already wet. What we can do is create the sort of consequential environments that help kids keep their heads above water.

Mostly adults fail to insulate kids from toxic influences—instead, we rescue them. We make it easy to engage in high-risk behaviors, then bail kids out so they don’t learn from the natural results of their mistakes and misdeeds. Life without consequences is confounding. When kids act out they get confused if there’s no equal and opposite reaction from the adults who care for them. If they don’t learn about cause and effect until something VERY BIG is at stake, the consequences can be crushing.

That’s why it’s so important to create an appropriately consequential environment for children; and I say create because it can’t be bought off-the-shelf—you have to cook it up at home from a family recipe. This requires thought and attention to minding the stove.

There are two kinds of consequences: Natural Consequences and Logical Consequences.

Natural Consequences flow directly out of the circumstances in a cause and effect relationship. Natural consequences are beautiful because you don’t have to think them up; they just are. 

sophisticated innocents iii | a small idea from Raising Adults

One of the great misdirections of our age is the notion that sexual sophistication equals maturity. And regarding the details of sexual expression many of our children are singularly sophisticated, deftly parsing the subtle differences between hooking up, fooling around and friends with benefits.

It is a sad sophistication. Just as they never knew a world without wonderful high-tech appliances, our children never knew a world without high-risk sex, dangerous blood and the dangers associated with chlamydia, pelvic inflammatory disease, HPV and HIV/AIDS. In fairness, at this stage of the game most kids are considerably more careful than their parents at the same age. Those who aren’t may pay a heavy price.

It’s worth noting that among kids who engage in early sexual activity are quite a few who, like those who took up smoking during and after the disclosure of the tobacco companies’ criminal activities, are pressing an agenda that has little to do with clear thinking and just about everything to do with wishing to be taken seriously. They’re not wrong to want that.

+ + +

Mike Yaconelli was fond of saying that crap detection is the spiritual gift of adolescents.*

Most kids believe almost nothing they hear and only half of what they see. This is probably a good thing because I don’t think we can fully protect children from what Al Franken called lies and the lying liars who tell them. 

For better or worse—or both—most kids learn what it takes to survive crazy families and social systems. Namely: Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel. The better part of learning that is what keeps kids from harming themselves irreparably; the worse part is that they’re lead to believe not talking, trusting and feeling is normal in human relationships (which may predispose them to repeat the same madness when it’s their turn—or surrender hope and opt out of committed relationships). So I’m not saying this is a healthy adaptation; only that it is a way of coping.

sophisticated innocents ii | a small idea from Raising Adults

Content is transparent.

Content comes at us—young and old—all day every day across multiple channels from sources known and unknown. Not thinking about content is easier by far than thinking about it. Not thinking about content can be hazardous in a world where ideas are peddled like soft drinks. 

Thinking about content is learned. Winnowing the wheat from the ideological chaff is another mature skill learned by contact with mature thinkers.

The media themselves are by definition neutral delivery platforms. There’s nothing inherently moral about a computer or a movie projector. It’s the content that makes the difference. A lot of adults pay too much attention to the platforms and too little attention to the content they deliver. Kids tend to take adult cues on this and, since the tech is already transparent to them, they often encounter content without assessing its value.

When it comes to violent, sexual and linguistic content, most kids are sophisticated in ways that would have made their great-grandfathers turn away and their great-mothers swoon. We’d be hard-pressed to find a media culture that exposes it’s children to more, or protects them less. There’s almost nothing they won’t see or hear sooner or later. 

By the time he’s seven, the average American child has seen more shocking sexual images than his great grandparents saw in a lifetime. 

—H. Stephen Glenn, in a live presentation circa 1990 (well before the internet became a conduit for photographs and videos)

There’s no point in pretending this isn’t true. There’s also no point in blaming the media—the computers and broadband and digital video players. There is a point—and a challenge and an opportunity—to teach kids to understand the content those media transmit. Because, when it comes to choosing content most kids are as unsophisticated as a two-year-old toddling about putting things in his mouth. He doesn’t yet know that just because it fits doesn’t mean it belongs there.

Don’t blame the kids. Children don’t create much content. I’ve never known a child pornographer*—just as there are no grade school drug lords or gun runners. Kids consume what adults generate and they tend to acquire their consumption habits by observing significant adults.

Given our cultural conversation on the subject of financial gain, I expect adults will keep selling what children and other people buy. And given our bent toward self-indulgence I expect children will continue buying what’s available... This is not a virtuous circle.

Our society, at the present time, is so caught up by the admiration of success that anything people get away with is admired. We’re a sick society in that respect. 

—George Soros, Rolling Stone, 12.98-1.99, page 137

Our job as parents, youth workers, teachers and the like, includes training kids to make mature choices about content.

— from Raising Adults

* I suppose it’s possible that wide access to mobile phone cameras may call this assessment into question. I imagine it’s just a matter of time till a grade school child is accused of obscenity.

in the wind | tweets in the space ending 04.05.14

interesting arc | TheCut.com editorial staff discuss NYT piece on talking with kids about porn http://thecut.io/1gOcPqJ

Stop right there | a soul-killing special tax on dark-skinned Americans http://bit.ly/1gOhARg 

Social Combat | a challenging new study on peer victimization at school http://bit.ly/1kv2oHN 

What actually happened | Sinner90 asked: "Teens of Reddit what's cool nowadays?" http://bit.ly/1kv4jvX 

sophisticated innocents | a small idea from Raising Adults http://jimhancock.blogspot.com

sophisticated innocents part i | a small idea from Raising Adults

Can you imagine a generation of children with greater access to technology, information and experience? 

Most of our children never knew a day without personal digital music players, video gaming, personal computers, mobile phones and video cameras, recorders and players—often all combined in a single device. Kids rely on technology, no questions asked. Digital media are in their blood. As a class, kids are as comfortable on the internet as adults are with the channel changer and telephone—and just about as uncomfortable without it. Kids hardly think about technology. They don’t have to; it’s transparent; it just is.

And isn’t transparency what sophistication is about? When something is so ordinary I don’t have to think about it, I don’t. And if I don’t think about it, it really is a no-brainer. Sometimes that’s good (breathing comes to mind). Other times, not so much. Culture comes to mind.

Most kids grow up multicultural in ways that just a generation ago would have shocked everyone but the children of missionaries, soldiers, spies and diplomats. I think that’s good. There’s no turning back from globalization and I don’t want to backtrack. One Planet, One People and all that.

By the mid-90s Douglas Coupland was writing about “global teens” for whom passports and clearing customs were no big deal. Our youngsters travel farther and more frequently than any generation before them. They can afford to, because travel is so cheap compared to prior generations. The craziness of terrorism and America’s fall from international grace may have slowed all that somewhat but nothing, apparently, can stop it. The internet certainly plays its part—kids connecting with kids around the globe on a 24-hour clock. And digital media make it possible for anyone to follow the news from anywhere—good or bad—in a matter of hours...if not minutes...if not live.

Even if our children don’t go to the world, the world comes to our children—and not just Europeans (that is so 19th century). These days North American kids meet Asians, Central and South Americans, Africans, Islanders—people from everywhere. And they very likely have classmates born on this continent of parents who were born elsewhere. Not that there are no ethnic ghettos left but for the most part ghetto populations are aging, and everywhere from city centers to suburbs our children are exposed to a great feast of world music, clothing, food and cultural mashups. 

All this exposure makes our children the most sophisticated lot in the history of humankind.

It follows that the more exposure kids have to people in the subcultures that border their own, and the earlier that exposure begins, the more naturally they build relationships across boundaries that once seemed clear and permanent to their grandparents. This does not mean kids understand other cultures. There’s every indication they don’t and that they take their friends’ cultural identities for granted. Unexamined relationships across subcultures can be fragile. Xenophobia lurks just below the surface of the relational grid, and racism is not dead (though it’s certainly sick). 

Learning to observe and understand and value other cultures and subcultures has a great deal to do with possessing the skills to perceive, understand and value one’s own culture. Developing that skill set is not a transparent no-brainer; it’s a process best learned in the company of personally and culturally mature adults. This of course raises the question: Does my child have access to such people? and, If not, how can we connect with such people and learn together?

All of which is to say it’s possible to be very sophisticated in terms of exposure and yet remain quite innocent—meaning, quite naive—about the significance of what we’ve observed and experienced but not yet understood. 

— from Raising Adults