Today’s youth stronger than we know
- col-dave-mast
- February 1, 2024
- 460
“Today’s young people can’t focus.”
“Young kids today aren’t driven, and they don’t want to work hard at anything.”
“These young people today don’t care about anything.”
“Kids today don’t know what they want.”
“There’s no respect from this generation of kids; they’re lazy, unruly and unteachable.”
If you listen to national news and root around on social media outlets like Instagram or TikTok, these are a few of the comments you may hear about today’s young generation.
Yes, there is a great deal of complaining today by adults about the state of our nation when it comes to someday turning it over to our youth.
However, if you take one step outside of your door and look around our communities, I think you’ll see a very different picture.
I look around and I see our young people working hard to become doctors, nurses, pastors, veterinarians, electricians, farmers and business people.
I see teens committing themselves to local athletic programs, where they are learning to work hard, learn team-oriented values and enhance their leadership skills.
I see kids developing all types of leadership skills in FFA, challenging themselves to be part of something special in bands and choirs or in stage productions. I watch as young people make an investment in developing leadership skills through Scouting or in 4-H.
Perhaps we are judging the entirety of our young people on some examples we see, and we’re focusing on the negatives rather than the positives.
Getting the opportunity to cover all types of high school and elementary events, I have seen and experienced some wonderful moments of education, work ethic and dedication.
Then I go to the area high schools, where the dean’s lists are posted, and there are a large percentage of kids who seem to be investing in their studies much more than I ever did.
Maybe the older generations can’t connect with today’s youngsters because we don’t understand the pains they endure, the trials that haunt them or the variety of hurdles they face in becoming adults because they are different than the ones we faced when we were young.
The issues facing today’s teens are far worse than anything I can remember going through.
Finally, perhaps what we see as failure in our young people doesn’t really manifest within them, but within us.
The values of our kids today don’t simply rise up out of thin air. It begins in our homes, with parents, who have the most difficult and important job in the world in raising their children.
It’s always struck me as kind of odd that we as adults have to get licenses and earn the right to do just about anything.
You wanna fish? You gotta get a license. Drive a car? Need a license. Teach? Get a degree. Be a doctor? Go to school for a decade.
Yet when it comes to parenting, there is no schooling necessary. It seems almost ludicrous that to teach someone else’s child, one must go through years of higher education, take all kinds of tests and go through ongoing educational workshops throughout your career.
Yet to teach our own children requires nothing more than nine months of “figure it out on your own — good luck. No education required.”
Sure, kids today face all kinds of people pulling them in every direction once they leave the home, with an ever-expanding variety of beliefs and social concerns being pushed at them at every turn, but that only enhances the importance of helping them develop a strong moral and ethical core at home.
If we want to blame our young people of today for being lazy, disinterested, unmotivated and lethargic, we need look no further than our own homes because that is where they are either learning these values or being allowed to get away with exemplifying them.
But from what I can see, we’ve got plenty of youth headed toward a very productive path in life.
It certainly is easy to point out the rotten eggs and troublemakers of the world. After all, they’re the ones making the headlines.
Just don’t let a few bad examples dictate your opinion when we see so many young people in our community working hard to build their future the right way.
Today’s kids might have their noses buried in their phones, but don’t let that define their effort to thrive.
I’ve seen far too many great and talented young people around here to think otherwise.