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 |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Wol
(Post 11889446)
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 A clip round the earhole is a great motivator |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Wol
(Post 11889446)
...or rewire a plug.
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. |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Wol
(Post 11889446)
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'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. |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by GarryP
(Post 11889509)
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. 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! . |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Wol
(Post 11890219)
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 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 :thumbsup: If you've always been kept on a tight leash, its no wonder you're bemused when the safety net gets taken away. |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Wol
(Post 11889446)
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
(Post 11889509)
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 |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Charismatic
(Post 11889492)
Since 1992 electrical appliances in the UK have had to be sold with plugs attached.
And change a wheel/chop wood/measure an angle/make a fire/know which way they are facing/pitch a tent etc |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Swerv-o
(Post 11890239)
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.
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 |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Swerv-o
(Post 11890239)
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.
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. |
Re: Adultesence
Aye, well, somebody's got to post The Four Yorkshiremen!
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Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Swerv-o
(Post 11890239)
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 |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by fish.01
(Post 11891480)
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).
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. |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by Gordon Barlow
(Post 11891517)
"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. At one stage in my 20's I think almost every person I knew was living overseas :blink: Talk about peer pressure :) |
Re: Adultesence
Originally Posted by fish.01
(Post 11891523)
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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