Adultesence

Old Mar 8th 2016, 6:59 am
  #1  
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Default Adultesence

These last few years I have found it amazing - and depressing - just how many modern parents wrap their children in cotton wool, do everything for them and let them "grow up" (my quotes) without the ability to do such basic things as lay out a right angle or rewire a plug.

An ExPat friend of mine has undergone several years of chemo for esophageal cancer yet does everything for his grown up children when they want anything, getting infections when babysitting etc.

Read this:

Spoiled Rotten - The New Yorker
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Old Mar 8th 2016, 8:17 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Wol
These last few years I have found it amazing - and depressing - just how many modern parents wrap their children in cotton wool, do everything for them and let them "grow up" (my quotes) without the ability to do such basic things as lay out a right angle or rewire a plug.

An ExPat friend of mine has undergone several years of chemo for esophageal cancer yet does everything for his grown up children when they want anything, getting infections when babysitting etc.

Read this:

Spoiled Rotten - The New Yorker
Sad

A clip round the earhole is a great motivator
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Old Mar 8th 2016, 8:29 am
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Wink Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Wol
...or rewire a plug.
Since 1992 electrical appliances in the UK have had to be sold with plugs attached.

No doubt there will be people my age mumbling about how kids don't know how to use "txt spk" any more as QWERTY keyboards have spoiled them.
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Old Mar 8th 2016, 8:46 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Wol
These last few years I have found it amazing - and depressing - just how many modern parents wrap their children in cotton wool, do everything for them and let them "grow up" (my quotes) without the ability to do such basic things as lay out a right angle or rewire a plug.
I do wonder if it's not an unintended byproduct of the pill and smaller families. If you are one kid in five, you'll learn pretty quickly to be self reliant - since nobody will do it for you. If you are an only child then there's more time for parents to indulge you. You only need a generation or two for the learnt behaviours of how you raise kids to get swept away and you arrive at parents doing everything.

I'm sure many will remember walking to school - not the faintest chance of getting ferried there in a car, it just wouldn't happen. Now it's totally inverted.

Which reminds me, there's probably a market opening for "Boot camp for University" where spoilt little darlings are taught how to look after themselves prior to being dumped in the deep end.
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Old Mar 9th 2016, 2:40 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by GarryP
I do wonder if it's not an unintended byproduct of the pill and smaller families. If you are one kid in five, you'll learn pretty quickly to be self reliant - since nobody will do it for you. If you are an only child then there's more time for parents to indulge you. You only need a generation or two for the learnt behaviours of how you raise kids to get swept away and you arrive at parents doing everything.

I'm sure many will remember walking to school - not the faintest chance of getting ferried there in a car, it just wouldn't happen. Now it's totally inverted.

Which reminds me, there's probably a market opening for "Boot camp for University" where spoilt little darlings are taught how to look after themselves prior to being dumped in the deep end.
I remember a few years ago listening on the car radio to an interview with very experienced ex prison governor (IIRC) She was firmly of the opinion that much of the prison population nowadays that is inside for violent crime is symptomatic of the way they were brought up (if that isn't too strong a phrase) being protected from every hazard.

Males in particular have often never been allowed to undertake risks and learn nothing about consequences. When they enter the big bad world they are totally unprepared and a proportion of them lash out by taking any risk going, leading to criminal activity.

You can certainly see young adults taking all sorts of risks that most of us would have turned down fifty years ago - and then expecting society to
rescue them when it all goes tits-up.

I like your suggestion of the boot camp!
.
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Old Mar 9th 2016, 3:00 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Wol
I remember a few years ago listening on the car radio to an interview with very experienced ex prison governor (IIRC) She was firmly of the opinion that much of the prison population nowadays that is inside for violent crime is symptomatic of the way they were brought up (if that isn't too strong a phrase) being protected from every hazard.

Males in particular have often never been allowed to undertake risks and learn nothing about consequences. When they enter the big bad world they are totally unprepared and a proportion of them lash out by taking any risk going, leading to criminal activity.

You can certainly see young adults taking all sorts of risks that most of us would have turned down fifty years ago - and then expecting society to
rescue them when it all goes tits-up.
I certainly think there a lack of 'you vs the world' in growing up that then finds young males unprepared for the hormone induced 'marking your place in the world' stage. If you've been coddled and told you are a 'special snowflake', you try to strut when you're not really capable of even waddling. So you hit out when the world is unimpressed.

I wouldn't say I was a particularly 'outdoors' type of kid, but I'd been roaming around since before the age of ten, playing on building sites, nearly drowning, etc. - all without 'adult supervision'. I'd also been in the scouts, out camping, out on fish boats, etc. All of which both gave me that 'roamin' perspective, and that the outdoors was best seen through glass

If you've always been kept on a tight leash, its no wonder you're bemused when the safety net gets taken away.
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Old Mar 9th 2016, 3:38 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Wol
These last few years I have found it amazing - and depressing - just how many modern parents wrap their children in cotton wool, do everything for them and let them "grow up" (my quotes) without the ability to do such basic things as lay out a right angle or rewire a plug.

An ExPat friend of mine has undergone several years of chemo for esophageal cancer yet does everything for his grown up children when they want anything, getting infections when babysitting etc.
[/url]

My brother and sister in law are skirting very close to doing this now IMHO - I'm not a parent, but I find it completely bizarre that they are continually measuring and adjusting the temperature in the house to try and keep the baby in some sort of goldilocks temperature range. I dare say that many millions of children grow up perfectly normally not in a 20-23 degrees temperature range.

Also, during my short tenure as a teacher, part of GCSE science was learning how to rewire a plug properly - it was one of the practical assessments. Not sure if it's still in though.


Originally Posted by GarryP
Which reminds me, there's probably a market opening for "Boot camp for University" where spoilt little darlings are taught how to look after themselves prior to being dumped in the deep end.

Not in Australia - the little darlings seem to all live at home with mum and dad until they are in their 30s! I've often remarked on how few Aussie students move out and live on campus or in halls. In the UK it is (or at least it was) a right of passage - Go to University and move as far away from home as possible.


S
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Old Mar 9th 2016, 3:57 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Charismatic
Since 1992 electrical appliances in the UK have had to be sold with plugs attached.
Everyone should be able to rewire a plug. End of

And change a wheel/chop wood/measure an angle/make a fire/know which way they are facing/pitch a tent etc
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Old Mar 9th 2016, 4:01 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Swerv-o
Not in Australia - the little darlings seem to all live at home with mum and dad until they are in their 30s! I've often remarked on how few Aussie students move out and live on campus or in halls. In the UK it is (or at least it was) a right of passage - Go to University and move as far away from home as possible.
I agree but distances and the cost of covering them are much greater in Australia, so students tend to study in their closest city. Students would benefit grealty if they did move away though

Children staying at home is not an Australian thing and is now common throughout the west. I would imagine that house prices have something to do with it
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Old Mar 9th 2016, 7:14 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Swerv-o
Not in Australia - the little darlings seem to all live at home with mum and dad until they are in their 30s! I've often remarked on how few Aussie students move out and live on campus or in halls. In the UK it is (or at least it was) a right of passage - Go to University and move as far away from home as possible.
Do they not take the opportunity to move away?

Going to university in the town you grew up in is to miss half the value of going to university at all; a clean and justifiable break between child and adult.
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Old Mar 10th 2016, 4:34 am
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Default Re: Adultesence

Aye, well, somebody's got to post The Four Yorkshiremen!
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Old Mar 10th 2016, 12:25 pm
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Swerv-o

Not in Australia - the little darlings seem to all live at home with mum and dad until they are in their 30s! I've often remarked on how few Aussie students move out and live on campus or in halls. In the UK it is (or at least it was) a right of passage - Go to University and move as far away from home as possible.


S
That's always been a difference...much down to geography I would guess, as suggested (costs/distance meant few facilities). Australian uni students instead have had for many, many decades the travelling/living overseas for a few years right of passage instead...again, probably down to geography (location of australia).
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Old Mar 10th 2016, 1:07 pm
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by fish.01
Australian uni students instead have had for many, many decades the travelling/living overseas for a few years right of passage instead...again, probably down to geography (location of australia).
"Rite" of passage, but still - you are right! In my day - many decades ago - it was fairly common for young Australians to go overseas for two or three years to "see the world", usually beginning in England. Some of us came home and settled down with those two or three years under our belt - others of us didn't, for one reason or another. I was one of the latter group. Worked in Canada for a couple of years to save some money, and even married an Aussie girl I'd met along the way, but we got side-tracked to the Bahamas and never quite made it back except for visits.

Three school-friends (that I knew about) went overseas at the same time but did go home on schedule, and lived happily ever after.

My wife and I have always felt more comfortable in the company of expats and ex-expats; we have experiences in common, after all.
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Old Mar 10th 2016, 1:14 pm
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by Gordon Barlow
"Rite" of passage, but still - you are right! In my day - many decades ago - it was fairly common for young Australians to go overseas for two or three years to "see the world", usually beginning in England. Some of us came home and settled down with those two or three years under our belt - others of us didn't, for one reason or another. I was one of the latter group. Worked in Canada for a couple of years to save some money, and even married an Aussie girl I'd met along the way, but we got side-tracked to the Bahamas and never quite made it back except for visits.

Three school-friends (that I knew about) went overseas at the same time but did go home on schedule, and lived happily ever after.

My wife and I have always felt more comfortable in the company of expats and ex-expats; we have experiences in common, after all.
Rite, thank you, clearly bedtime

At one stage in my 20's I think almost every person I knew was living overseas Talk about peer pressure
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Old Mar 17th 2016, 6:08 pm
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Default Re: Adultesence

Originally Posted by fish.01
At one stage in my 20's I think almost every person I knew was living overseas. Talk about peer pressure
Back in the day, in Kangaroo Valley in the '60s, New Zealand girls were more determined than most to return home. We referred to such girls as "home-makers", slightly disparagingly, meaning that they yearned for three kids and a white picket-fence around a house in the suburbs. Of course we all ended up like that, pretty much, but in our early 20s we young expats weren't very tolerant of the dream.
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