It's important to distill a sense of agency in children. That they can control at least some aspects of their future. In my opinion one of societies current ailes is that we underestimate the amount of agency individuals have in society.
Children don't have the agency/brain development to take care of themselves in the presence of societal and peer pressure. This is the basis of many, many laws, social mores, and taboos.
I think the dichotomy between perceived empowerment and actual empowerment is interesting. Children who are allowed to do "whatever they want" seem empowered, but in actuality, they are disempowered by being deprived of necessary practice in learning important disciplines (patience, long-term planning, etc.)
Actually empowering children involves giving them choices, yes, but within a framework that constrains them. "You have a choice to eat the candy now, but at a cost later" teaches a child to make long(er)-term decisions than "do whatever you want". This mirrors the actual experiences they will have later in life, where they will have freedom, but still be required to operate with the bounds of lawful society. (I can buy myself X now, but I will have to save later in order to pay my mortgage, etc.)
By refusing to limit children by modeling the realities they will face later in life, adults teach children that consequences are fantasy, often to disastrous results when they grow up.
agency comes from power. i think nihilistic despair in kids comes from sense that people who actually have power (and for kids it is primary parents) have failed to solve the problem.
for grown ups, of course it is more nuanced - we know that we lack power to solve the issue or else we would have done it. instead we put hopes and expectations on our kids - that they will rise to meaningful power, where they can change things.
I have much younger kids, and we also think this is very important. It seems like everything in a kid's life is so nerfed. For us it starts with letting the kids do things on the playground with an actual risk of injury (obviously we're trying to avoid actual serious injury, but we think the kids need agency).
It also involves letting them make decisions that can have bad outcomes that are largely harmless when they're young, like getting a stomach ache from too much candy, and clearly connecting the act to the consequence. So far it's worked pretty well, our kids have a good idea of what's healthy and what's not.
We're also going to do something like set up Etsy stores for the kids so that they get experience with buying supplies and making a product that's good enough for a stranger to buy, manipulating the web page (and eventually we'll move on to them making making their own Shopify or Wordpress sites), and running social media accounts for the businesses and what not. We're already getting one store started for our five year old who's really interested in making money (for now).
We're doing a lot of it now, but we're planning on having them take on more and more responsibility as they get older. Instead of doing chores (or in addition), they'll be actually interacting with the world in a way that's analagous to adulthood. Who knows how it will play out, but we're excited to see what happens.
I think we need to predict what kids will become, what they actually want, and fully commit to giving them that outcome. It’s necessary to take some risk of an outcome like WW, but they were just being opportunistic. We need to pursue for children a narrative with intent.
We can certainly invest in kids, but there has to be an expectation that they put in the effort as well and the idea that just because they put in the effort does not mean they will be as successful as another doing something similar. We have to instill the idea that they have a general responsibility to themselves, their family, and their community. We used to have a semblance of this but over the last 80+ this really seems to have gone out the window.
I think I understand what the article is saying here. To be a bit reductive: "give kids some credit". I get it. In todays society children are seen as a financial burden redeemed only by the meaningful emotional and spiritual impact they might have on their caregivers. That is the value of a child. We, in the process of trying to protect children from exploitation, placed them in a glass box and after that quite rightly expected nothing from them. In doing so we inadvertently lost all faith in their capabilities.
I actually believe if we gave kids and teenagers more agency they'd be a little bit more protected against predative behaviour. For the young teenage girl someone twice their age telling them "wow you're so mature for your age" might no longer be the clearing in the forest that they run to.
maybe not. but children do experience power imbalances in their own lives, particularly when dealing with their peers. and it's valuable to learn how to identify them, and how to build better systems that benefit everybody.
Most children don't have any merit or security unless they do something to earn it as they become adults. They are getting ahead of where they would be if they did nothing.
They absolutely have that level of thinking. They can't always verbalize it eloquently, so the author may have re-phrased it as the article was written. But my kids have real depth of feeling about the world, their place within it, and have more passion about engaging with it in their own way than most adults I know... not because adults don't have the same concerns, but because we resolved them decades ago, while the teens and tweens are just starting to engage in that process.
I personally believe that coddling youth can potentially do more damage than good. Learning to overcome challenges and deal with defeat is part of being human and growing up and it builds a sense of confidence and self reliance.
I think there is something to do with agency. Look at the video games kids are playing, like minecraft. They are building homes, changing the environment to suit their needs, stockpiling resources, linearly levelling up, etc. It's a lot more enticing than being told what to do every day in scouts or marching up that same tired old trail you are already bored to death of, or seeing your skills plateau in sports. Plus there aren't even many adults doing these things anymore to pass on to their kids. Hard to become a teenage fisherman when you don't have a family member to teach you to tie a lure or what bait is good for where, or have a spare rod you can use, and have no money to buy a rod since you aren't working yet, and have no way to even get to somewhere to get a rod or even get to a fishing hole without your parents making time to shuttle you about. Hard to play catch when your dad doesn't own a glove to toss with you.
I felt sad when reading this comment. You are saying that children are "creative" and think "outside the lines," but once you're an adult you should follow directions or else be disciplined. A bit dystopian is this society you describe.
reply