What’s Up with the Kids?

In the early 1980s, scholars and researchers on family and adolescent issues began asking the question, What is happening to our kids? Their answers came through a series of books with discouraging titles such as The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon, All Grown Up and No Place to Go, The Disappearance of Childhood, The Erosion of Childhood and The Rise and Fall of Childhood.

Over the last 25 years, the problems and issues addressed in those books have increased, manifesting themselves in the growing number of negative teenage attitudes, behaviors, and social problems that concern us so much. While there are always glimmers of hope and numerous reasons for optimism, overall trends point to the fact that things aren’t getting any better for our teenagers.

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Now the parenting, family issues, and social science sections in bookstores are expanded to help parents, teachers, and  those in the helping professions deal with drug and alcohol abuse, teenage sex, violence, bullying, Internet dangers, selfabuse, and all the other complex issues our kids face every day.

In the midst of these complex problems, we must also acknowledge that there is a developmental difference between teenagers and adults. We live in two different stages of the life cycle. Consequently, we think and act in markedly different ways. We live in two very different worlds.

Meet Sarah, an Average Teenager

Several years ago I asked teenagers to email me a list ranking the five greatest pressures they face. The results opened my eyes to the changes that have taken place in the cultural soup of teenagers.

One of the kids who responded was Sarah, a 16-year-old only child from New York. Her list was representative of the other lists I received, and I’ve been reading and rereading her list for years, as it serves as a constant reminder of the realities facing kids in today’s youth culture. At number one Sarah listed the pressure for “looks.”

I come from an upper-middle-class home. I’m a straight-A student, class president and an overachiever in every way. I don’t really know why I am anorexic, but I think it’s partly because I thought that if I got really sick, people would pay attention to me more and like me. The irony of it is that my father is a psychologist. He doesn’t know.

My mother always compares her life to mine, so much that sometimes I feel smothered by her. I cannot talk to my father at all about important things. I never could. My father is home every evening at 6 PM, but my mother is never home. She recently opened a business, so she has to work from 9 AM until midnight. Sometimes she comes home to see me in the afternoons, and sometimes she is around on weekends. Incidentally, my parents do not get along very well.

My mom says if I get therapy, it will go on my record and may keep me out of Princeton or Amherst, the colleges to which I am applying. I know my parents love me, but they think I am so bright and capable that I don’t need help or attention anymore. I just want people to realize I do not have a perfect life, and I am lonely. I want people at school to notice me more and like me. Actually, I’m not at all sure what I want.

I’ve met many Sarahs over the years, and I continue to meet more of them as time goes by. Although their stories differ in terms of the places, dates, details and depth of their problems, there are some common threads.

Each one is an adolescent who is already dealing with the normal changes that come with growing up. On top of that, each is confused and frustrated by challenging circumstances. Many of them cope and are remarkably resilient. Others struggle to survive. Some self-destruct.

Sadly, in the midst of this reality, most adults don’t understand that the world has changed. Consequently, they have no idea how it’s different and how those differences are affecting kids. Thus, the cultural-generational gap grows wider.

As youth leaders, parents, Christian leaders and caring adults, we need to study the rapidly changing culture our young people live in. Otherwise our relationships will crumble into the gap.

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