My Thanksgiving post from last year is still relevant, and, unfortunately, still rings true.  Times are still tough, though it feels better to be looking downhill than up.  I realize that many can’t see it that way, but one thing you come to realize after having lived through tough times is that they eventually end.  The trick is surviving long enough to get the better days.

Of the many guests coming to join me for dinner today, a few have suffered quite a bit over the past year.  Lost jobs and homes are hard for anyone to endure, especially when it seems as if it was all driven by external forces with no fault of their own.  Yes, there has been pain in my extended family as there has with so many others. Like so many others, my millennial niece is living in her mother’s basement, with her husband and daughter. Oh yes, and her Ph.D. 

The problem is that it’s not exactly true that the pain we’re enduring is all external, or that there’s no fault to be found.  I’ve written quite a bit over the past year about young lawyers, those I call the Slackoisie, and for the most part, they haven’t liked what I’ve had to say.  No one likes to hear that they create their own problems, even in part.  But they do, just as the young in my family who have suffered this year have made choices that resulted in their circumstances. 

My generation has tried to provide a good education, love and support to our children.  No, not everyone, but for the most part, we have raised a generation that is far better educated than any before it and far more secure in their belief of their self-worth.  In some ways, this has been a successful experiment in child-rearing. In others, it’s been a terrible failure.  We’ve raised a generation of narcissists who hold a dangerous belief in their entitlement to everything the world has to offer, both material and intellectual.

What we have been unable to successfully accomplish is to instill the notion that, at some point, they need to grow up and take responsibility for themselves, their choices, their actions and inactions.  Stop looking to us for approval and start recognizing for themselves that they must bear the consequences of their choices.  You can’t spend your lives expecting mommy and daddy to fix every problem you face, or to tell you that it’s okay, you’re not responsible for you childish choices. 

The waggish retort from the children is that their failings are our fault.  Yes, they are, to a large extent.  But so what?  Do they plan to spend the rest of their lives complaining about it, or do they plan to get off their butts and improve their own situations?  We gave you too much, we comforted you too long, we watched you whenever you wanted our attention, we never spanked you or told you that your ideas were, well, dumb.  We never wanted to hurt your self-esteem, and in the process, created little monsters filled with your own self-importance. 

We hoped you would grow out of it and realize that the rest of the world didn’t love you as much as we did.  That you were not quite as brilliant and wonderful as we led you to believe.  That not everybody gets a trophy in real life, or a house, or a BMW, or recognition by all who look at you that you are the most beautiful, brilliant, wonderful child ever.  In fact, aside from us and a few of your close friends, nobody really cares much about you at all.  They are all too busy thinking only of themselves and their own self-importance. 

I’ve been largely unsuccessful in conveying this message to readers.  I’m not sure whether it’s because of my failure to send a clear message or their inability to receive the message I’ve sent.  I imagine it’s some of both.  They’re surrounded by a wall that took a generation to build, and a few harsh words from some jerk on a blawg won’t easily break through.

My motive is to help them to survive and thrive in a tough world.  We depend on them to pick up where we left off, at least as far as the good things we do.  I’ve written that I truly care about kids, and I’ve been told in response that I’m full of it.  They’re understanding of caring is blind support and comfort.  Granted, they won’t find that here, but then that’s not what they need.  They’ve had a lifetime of coddling and it hasn’t served them nearly as well as we had hoped.  It’s time for a good smack to wake them up to the reality that they’re not 12 years old anymore.

A terrific twit came across my screen yesterday that made an important point.