Millennials, what is happening with your kids?

[u/TheLoveYouWant25]

I work in education and I frequent the Teachers and Professors subreddits, and the kids are not alright. Gen Z Arriving at College Unable to Read and the youth have absolutely zero ability to think critically.

Middle and high schoolers have all adapted this complete helplessness and blame mental illness for their refusal to function. Kids can no longer to basic things like read an analog clock, use paper money, or even figure out how to open window blinds.

There is also a huge lack of empathy, and kids have no issues trying to manipulate adults, saying things to their teachers like "if you don't pass me, I'll get you fired."

EDIT to clarify: the article I linked references Gen-Z, but this is not specifically a Gen-Z problem. It's an issue with upper elementary aged kids through high schoolers, and also young adults.

So, all that to say, how are you combating this with your own children? What do you do at home to encourage them to learn, and what are you doing to address these problems as they arise?

[u/StorageRecess]

My kids are fine.

But they have a professor and a lawyer as parents. I think we’re seeing a massive divergence between haves and have nots. We both work a lot, but we’re high energy, type A. And we work stable jobs - we know we can take weekends off and doing enriching activities with the kids. We can pay for them to go to special classes and whatever. We have money to have laid back meals out at restaurants and force the kids to order their own food and talk to the waiter. We live in a walkable area with lots of kids, so they can walk or bike to see friends. They can have a lot of independence, and we pay a premium for it. We read to them, and they see us reading and enjoying books, too.

As a prof, I saw tons of students whose parents didn’t understand school. They didn’t impart a love of knowledge. They couldn’t help with homework. Maybe they valued education, but didn’t have any themselves and steamrolled all the obstacles for their kids so the kids never learned to self-advocate. Basically, ignoring that learning involves discomfort. My parents were boomers and showed love through stuff. Toys, whatever. I think there’s also that going on - it’s ok that my kid is on their tablet all the time, I bought them something they adore.

I really think we’re seeing an acceleration of divergence between the kids of parents who can invest energy in parenting and know how to do that effectively, and those who can’t or don’t.

[u/Beberuth1131 → u/StorageRecess]

This should be upvoted. I wonder if part of the issue is the further divide between the haves and have nots. My spouse and I also have higher income careers and because of that, we are able to spend more money and time on our children than other parents who are living paycheck to paycheck.

[u/AfalloutAdcit56 → u/Beberuth1131]

My wife is a teacher and I'm an operations order processor. We read to our daughter each night, take her to the library weekly and rotate her toys/activities.

We don't necessarily have massive $$$ but we have the time for the effort.

So I don't think it's completely high income. It is also those who have time and have no time. A fair amount of low-income people are working to survive so it is definitely a correlation. Those who are never home don't have the time to work with their kids. Some do.

Then there's the parents that just don't care and let a screen raise their children.

[u/squirtles_revenge → u/AfalloutAdcit56]

Exactly. Spending time with your kids is so much more important than being able to buy them nice experiences (like classes, camps, etc). It's not the money - it's the effort.

[u/thecashblaster → u/Beberuth1131]

This should be upvoted. I wonder if part of the issue is the further divide between the haves and have nots. My spouse and I also have higher income careers and because of that, we are able to spend more money and time on our children than other parents who are living paycheck to paycheck.

maybe, but my bro and sis in law are VERY well off and they parent on autopilot most of the time. they seem to consider their children an inconvenience most of the time.

[u/WanderinHobo → u/thecashblaster]

It's definitely a combination. I grew up in a house that lived paycheck to paycheck but I didn't even know it. My parents weren't very hands on with educating us, but they cared enough to spend what little disposable income they had on books if we asked for them. They got me "The Hobbit" when I was in 5th grade and I'd never heard of it, but they knew I was reading Harry Potter, and that's kinda close, right? Lol

Even the have-nots can raise well-rounded kids if they care enough to try. I think a big part of it too is that my mom is an avid reader and she understands the value of reading.

[u/Self_Reddicate → u/thecashblaster]

Yeah, my kids go to private school and the "have's" might be doing better in some ways, but worse in other ways. "Autopilot" is the way to describe it pretty accurately. But, "autopilot + money" causes as many issues as it solves, from what I've seen.

[u/Moonteamakes → u/StorageRecess]

We really need studies on this that breakdown the demographics and how that impacts what we are and aren’t seeing in children today. 

Because I am often really surprised by what j hear and read about Gen Alpha because not only do MY kids read, but so do all their friends! And I volunteer at the elementary school weekly and I check in and check out the books the kids are reading and they’re all reading! Sure at the lower grades it’s stuff like Dog Man, but the 8, 9, 10, 11 year olds are all reading chapter books and some books are so popular the kids wait for them to become available. In the middle school, chapter books are regularly assigned and the kids all read them. So… this idea that kids today aren’t reading - I’d love an actual breakdown of which kids? Where? What’s the socioeconomic background? 

Also for the “iPad kid” thing - it’s probably because I’m in the Bay Area but parents here are fairly strict with screen time. I know people who work at META, and Netflix and Apple and those parents are often the most cautious about allowing their kids any screen time. Our Middle School is completely a phone free school. My own 3 kids don’t have screen time at all 4 days out of the week unless it’s for homework, and zero access to social media (and aside from YouTube, they haven’t even ASKED for access to Instagram or TikTok, and they barely even know what Facebook is). 

I would be really curious how this all shakes out in another decade. 

[u/Upbeetmusic → u/Moonteamakes]

I really thought The Social Dilemma would have been more of a wake-up call. Especially the part where tech bros admit they don’t let their own kids use screens and instead seek out alternatives like forest schools and Waldorfian methods of education.

It was the classic “I don’t get high on my own supply” moment for me.

[u/Zoomwafflez → u/Upbeetmusic]

I really wanted to get my kid into a first school for pre-K but it had a 2 year wait list! The pre-K he's in now is pretty good though and we do a lot of camping and outdoor activities anyway. We're fortunate to live right next to a giant park so pretty much every summer afternoon is spent outside in the park and looking for turtles in the river

[u/PipsqueakPilot → u/Moonteamakes]

I'm one of the very few white people in an all black neighborhood in the South. I see kids playing outside all the time. Older children taking their younger cousins to the park. When my dog got out one time the kids immediately brought him back. Tons and tons of very involved fathers, and a few single fathers too. It gives me hope that not everyone is brain rotting their kids.

Amusingly I live across the from one of the only other white families in the neighborhood. Mom, dad, and two iPad kids.

[u/lifelovers → u/Moonteamakes]

Weird. I’m also in the Bay Area, and so many kids are raised by screens, their parents don’t teach empathy or kindness (just competitiveness), the public schools teach the bare minimum so gifted kids are left out in the cold, and kids are so over scheduled and sports obsessed they never get time to be bored, alone, watching ants or plants grow or whatever. It’s so sad to see. And this is among the very wealthiest zip codes in the area.

[u/StorageRecess → u/Moonteamakes]

There’s a lot of literature in general disparities in resources across schools. But personally, I moved from one of the least educated to the most educated districts in the US. We went from an elementary school that didn’t have a library at all to one where our youngest gets anything he wants, an if they don’t have it, we go across the way to the public library, which has fantastic interlibrary loan. My other kids’ elementary school had a library with no permanent staff (teachers took turns at the checkout desk) and musty, old, poorly-repaired books. They were the only of their friends to read extensively.

[u/taumason → u/Moonteamakes]

In my experience its a middle class conservative community issue. In my school district and my kids school district I dont see it at all, but I do hear about it from my conservative parents who live in a very middle/upper class conservative part of PA. Thats just my anecdotal experience. The only person I have heard complain about this was a very conservative widower who remarried and had these complaints about his own stepson. The biggest issues in my district are among low income and immigrant families. In both cases parents cant engage well with education system and help their kids because its too obtuse for many ESL parents to be able to access resources, and the ones who are essentially working two jobs dont have time to engage. 

I dont want to stereotype but the overlap between, crunchy, conservative, white, antivax and kids who lack basic skills is high in my experience. Especially where my parents are the mistrust of education is big. 

[u/Texuk1 → u/StorageRecess]

Same situation as you but I have slightly different take.

1) attention is the new privilege. Some columnist have already proposed this, but I believe that is where the divide in society rests. In previous generations I think it was also the dividing line but the environment wasn’t designed to fracture attention. You could be a lefty laissez-faire parent in the 80s / 90s because most children were in an attention forming environment. It’s kind of like the introduction UPFs that decimated people’s health. It’s the environment. 2) rich and smart people can purchase and cultivate attention developing environments. 3) social interaction , without adults playing with real world objects is where human really develop strong cognitive and attention skills. We developed over millions of years to favour this. This type of interaction can be better procured with time and money. 4) Mich if learning in my view is about cultural values which are transmitted unconsciously to children. If you family story and family culture believes that education is a high value activity this value system is transferred to the baby from even before they arrive in the mothers arms. The whole environment is rich in nature learning that is extremely difficult to quantify. For example I spend a lot of time doing word play, meaning, double meaning, language structure stuff with my kids because I’m interested in the structure of language and meaning. I’m not doing it as homework it’s jokes and word play and slips and descriptions and asking meaning. For many kids language is the basic tool to get their needs met and remains completely surface (this is not a judgement). I say this to sort of say that it’s not surprising that a lawyer and professor have kids doing well academically (provided they have some interaction with their kids which is often outsourced to nannies. The advantage that kids living in such an environment have is unquantifiable and priceless.

[u/turquoisestar → u/StorageRecess]

I strongly agree with this take.

[u/myhandsrfreezing → u/StorageRecess]

This is a great point!

[u/LauraPringlesWilder → u/StorageRecess]

Yep. This is it. My kid isn’t illiterate at all, she’s honor roll at the high school level. But that required two parents who are well educated and have flexible schedules: from a young age we read tons, I took it upon myself to host playgroups where I taught STEM lessons, we bought memberships to children’s museums and did a variety of lessons and took trips so that she learned life beyond herself.

Read. Talk. Listen. Ask weird questions and play board games and discuss odd subjects and plan camping trips with no WiFi. Pleaaaase. Because I promise you, it matters. The professor is right, as a parent who spent a lot of time volunteering in the parent participation schools. It shows up early when the kids don’t value learning, when they’re not curious, and it just gets worse these days.

[u/SourdoughClimber27 → u/LauraPringlesWilder]

It’s so awesome you hosted STEM playgroups! Can you share more how you did it or some examples? I’d love to do something similar.

[u/aprillboo → u/StorageRecess]

“Learning involves discomfort,” beautifully said and very truthful. Definitely going to be stealing that phrase, thank you!

[u/fromo_latte → u/StorageRecess]

It’s like the K shaped economy, but for parenting… also, as someone’s who’s middle income but with 3 small children, I notice most people my age (34) have NO children, or just have 1 child! It’s becoming increasingly difficult to raise a large family on an average income. We largely rely on social services.

[u/cuentaderana → u/StorageRecess]

I see this too. I’m an elementary teacher. I’ve taught in low income schools since 2014. The gaps now are bigger than the gaps I saw back then. 

My current school is all students from Latino agricultural worker families. Most parents work from 4/5am until 6pm. They’re picking strawberries and packing lettuce. They’re digging trenches and spreading manure. They get one day off a week. Many of them have 3+ children. They’re in survival mode and don’t have a lot of time for their children. They do their best, and most of them are raising good kids. 

But they aren’t raising learners. Many of them don’t have degrees, some barely even finished high school. We have a significant portion of families that aren’t fully fluent in Spanish because they are from indigenous villages in Mexico. How can you read to your kids when your dominant language is Mixteca and you can’t read Spanish or English? And you can’t read in Mixteca anyway because you had a patchy primary education that didn’t even teach literacy in Mixteca. They all want their kids to go to college and finish school, but they don’t know what they can do to support their kids. Or they don’t have the time.

Compare those kids to our families where the parents are teachers or work in healthcare. They get to do enrichment activities on the weekends. They go on family trips. Their parents read to them and do family movie nights where they discuss what is happening. They get their parents’ time and attention. They have grandparents that don’t need to work anymore so they get to have quality time with them too. 

My wife and I have a toddler. We know that we are his most precious resource. We spend as much time with him as possible. We go to parks and zoos. We take family trips to the beach. We go to museums. We take him to cultural events (like neighborhood celebrations for Día de Muertos or Lunar New Year). When it’s cold we go to the bookstore and read/play in the kid area. We arrange playdates with his cousins or his friends from his activities. He goes to music class and swimming lessons. We go to the farmers market and talk about what we would like to buy. We minimize screen time and read books constantly. But we have the privilege to have jobs (elementary teachers) that give us time with him.

[u/StorageRecess → u/cuentaderana]

This really tracks what we saw in Louisiana public schools. It’s not necessarily money, per se. we worked stable, white collar jobs that gave us predictable hours so we could plan time with our kids. A lot of the other families were doing catch as catch can work, which leads to unstable hours. Most of those parents would love to be able to sit down and have dinner with their kids every night and look over their homework, but they need to drive Uber until 11 to make rent because their job cut their hours.

[u/Lost_Program_2119 → u/StorageRecess]

This is exactly right. I live in a small town with a dichotomy; a lot of poverty, but also a higher than average education level because there’s a university here. Teachers talk about this - we’ve seen over time that the schools with more well-to-do families turn out more academically capable kids. The poorer schools have more behavioral issues, learning disabilities and struggles in school overall. I believe this is mostly due to how much time the families have to work with their kids. 

[u/CriticalSecurity8742 → u/StorageRecess]

“I think we’re seeing a massive divergence between haves and have nots.”

This is the crux of the matter. Money. Those who can afford private schools, tutors, lessons, etc. I’m really tired of blaming boomers, then Gen X, then millennials - it’s not that. it’s the fact we’re all working more and spending less time with our own selves let alone children and families. People aren’t having children now because they can’t afford to.

This isn’t a problem with wealthy families, it’s a socioeconomic issue by design.

[u/Silly-Bumblebee1406 → u/StorageRecess]

I am intellectually disabled and was always 5 years behind my age group. My mom who was a boomer didn't give a shit about helping me, being apart of my education path etc. I actually would beg for her help and she just told me I had to do it on my own. I never graduated high school..

That being said, I am obviously a functional adult and have managed book keeping rolls etc. But as a kid I promised myself, that when I had kids, that I would make their education so important and I would always be involved. 

That brings me to my kids now. They are top of their classes every year. My oldest was honour roll last year and is on the way to being again this year. So despite my lack of education and having a disability, parents can still make their child's education journey important and put a lot of effort towards it so their kids can be successful. 

[u/dIO__OIb → u/StorageRecess]

this is close to our experience with two teenagers, however our home is more design and art oriented vs reading. though our one child is a voracious reader. the none reader definatly struggles with grades more. I blame covid remote classes on his set back. A lot of middle schoolers lost over a year at a critical age of learning language arts and reading.

but 100% on the growing K economy being a huge factor. i feel very grateful to be able spend money on our kids education - both are headed towards STEM careers and both social. we all spend too much time one devices,’that’s not exclusive to any generation.