A few years ago, after watching a commercial where I saw an adult woman with an enraptured look on her face taking her gummy vitamin, I decided to give it a try.  Not because I thought “wow, I get to eat candy and get my vitamins too!”, like I did as a kid with Flintstone vitamins, but because I was having difficulty swallowing the large vitamin I had been taking for awhile.  I had never eaten a “gummy” anything before so I thought, how bad could it be?  It was bad.  Chewing something like rubber for what feels like eternity was not my idea of making taking vitamins easier.  It was annoying.  My son, who had grown up eating gummy bears took on the task of finishing the bottle for me.

I have no problem with adults occasionally taking a walk back in time to remember their childhood.  For instance that brief reconnection with Lucky Charms or PopTarts.  Sorry, those are my problems. But as an adult, despite how tempting something may be, I try not to do it because, well,  I’m an ADULT.  There is a big difference between remaining youthful and trying to remain a kid as demonstrated by young adults who refer to their occasional acts of responsibility as “adulting”.  I want to say before I get into this, that I’m not about to slam all young adults here.  My youngest son who is 27 has owned a home for years, is married, pays his bills on time, put himself through college and works hard.  For him, I think it was a challenge to see how independent he could be, to see how much he could accomplish.  Unfortunately, based on things I’m reading about our young adults, he seems to be the exception to the rule.

As a teacher, I get that everyone develops at their own rate and I understand brain development research and how the male brain isn’t fully developed until about age 25.  This however does not stop us from allowing 16 year olds to drive, 18 year olds to join the military and vote and 21 year olds to drink alcohol.  These are all things that require huge adult thought processes and responsibility, but somehow, despite these very important responsibilities, we, as a society, don’t seem to hold young people responsible for anything else.

More young adults are moving back home than ever before.  In the old days, you either went to college or you went to work and you moved out and started your adult life.  It was assumed that your parents had trained you to do things that would allow you to step out on your own – responsibility, work ethic, respect, and teaching you things like how to budget and take care of yourself and your home.  It would have been embarrassing to have to say you were living with your parents.  Now, it seems it’s the status quo.  Again, there are extenuating circumstances for some and it is necessary for a short time.  But at some point, the parents need to let them go and push them out of the nest.  And not necessarily gently. Struggle is not going to kill them if you have given them the necessary tools.

But unfortunately it seems that we have young people who want their college to be paid for and not have to be responsible for working to pay for it, who want that perfect job right out of high school school or college that pays enough to keep them in the lifestyle they’re accustomed to and still be able to party and play with the latest devices in their leisure time.  But what if I get accepted to Harvard and I can’t pay for it and the only way is to get student loans?  Well my friends, that’s called budgeting and if you can’t afford it and you don’t want to pay off student loans, then you need to go to a school that you CAN afford.  You get out of your education what you put into it anyway and I’ve seen plenty of people succeed very well in life after working their way through state universities.

But I think what concerns me most is the lack of emotional maturity.  I get it.  Life is hard. Life is not fair.  Bad things happen.  But if you understand that this is the way life is, you’re not so surprised when stuff happens.  Parents are doing everything they can to shield their children from hardship, all in the name of love.  We all want things to be perfect for our kids, but the problem is that life isn’t perfect.  And if we wrap them in bubble wrap and shelter them from all the bad feelings and make all the bad things go away for them, it’s no wonder we have things like young adults sitting in their cars immobilized because they can’t face another day of teaching in the classroom.  It’s HARD. We all want to make life good and certainly better for our kids than what we had, but there will always be struggles and we’re doing our kids a disservice if we don’t prepare them for reality and perhaps teach them ways make the world better along the way.

I write this out of concern for what I see in my classroom every day.  I see children struggle with not getting their way and reacting violently when they don’t.  I see children refusing to work or follow directions or lacking respect for authority.  If this continues, these kids will struggle to find and keep work to take care of themselves.  I see kids who can’t deal with struggle or failure and who just collapse into sobs, calling themselves names and thinking they’re stupid.  I and other teachers can only do so much.  Other adults who are involved with these kids have got to step up and help them so they can survive real “adulting” in the future.  Otherwise we’ll continue to raise generations of adults who expect things to be done for them, who sit and do nothing but play on their devices and demand gummy vitamins instead of any “hard pills” they need to swallow.