Learning Points: Labelling our kids as useless is nothing new

Are these snowflakes, cotton-wool teens, Generation Zs, really any different to previous generations, asks Richard Hogan

‘That guy is a melt, last week he mugged me off in front of my mot, I got salty about it but was on point with what I said to him.”

Huh? Well, if you’re like me, you’re more than likely slightly confused. Because, in my time ‘a melt’ was a delicious hot cheese sandwich, now it is someone who annoys you, ‘mug off’ was what my mother screamed when I placed hot tea on her solid oak table, now it is to make a fool of someone, ‘salty’ well, that was simple, it meant too much salt, now it means to get angry with someone, and ‘mot’ was something that you tried to get out of the house for fear it eat your clothes now it’s a girlfriend.

Yes, their language is different. Yes, they are more into technology than we were. And yes, the way we view them has changed. But are these snowflakes, cotton-wool teens, generation Zs or whatever label you want to throw at them really any different to previous generations that have gone before?

Negative pejoratives

In my experience, I’d have to say; they are not different and we are doing them such a disservice by using negative pejoratives like ‘snowflakes’ to describe them. I grew up in a time when teenagers were either known as ‘grunge heads’ or ‘techno heads’ but I remember thinking at the time how it didn’t really catch all of us because I was neither of those descriptors, so what was I? A Cure head?

Maybe. I liked The Beatles so maybe I was a mop top, but I didn’t have the hair cut. I definitely wasn’t a Mod or a Rocker and glam rock didn’t do it for me or at least I couldn’t find shoulder pads growing up in Cork, so again; what was I? Oh yeah, I was a teenager growing up in the 90s. And that was kind of ‘rad.’ Each generation has it’s own slang and each generation gets looked on with confusion and suspicion by the passing one. But these teenagers are really getting a hard time of it because they are more vocal about what it is they are feeling and going through.

When Lear is out at the cliffs with Gloucester he asks him how he sees the world now that he is blind, Gloucester replies; ‘I see it feelingly.’ So our teenagers are experiencing the world in a more feeling way. Surely this must be seen as progress? After all they wouldn’t be able to express the depths of their emotions if their parents (who were once ‘grunge heads’ or ‘techno heads’) hadn’t instilled in them that they were safe to express those very feelings and thoughts.

Or if they hadn’t received the message that maybe life isn’t as simple as our binary system once told us it was. So why have we turned on them? Maybe it’s jealousy, why do they get to be the ones to live life how they want to? Answer; because we, the parents, told them to expect more and to question accepted norms.

Annoyance at the hypocrisy

In my work I talk to adolescents every day, both in a clinical setting and in the school system. And I often ask them how they feel about the way they are viewed by the adult world. What I hear is very interesting.

They generally become animated about it and express deep annoyance at the hypocrisy that underpins the label, snowflakes — because they see that label for what it is, a way to diminish them and to rubbish their feelings as precious and irrelevant. Life for the modern teenager is different than any other generation that has gone before, with the proliferation of technology and ubiquitous Internet means that new vistas of communication have become possible. Language maybe more abbreviated and functional and how they go about socialising has changed but other than that the teenager of today has the same needs as every other teenager that has gone before.

Yet, the media is interested in painting these children as some sort of alien race that parents find almost impossible to relate to. Every coming generation is treated with intolerance by adults who do not have the skills or interest to listen to them and understand what it is they are going through. And when we don’t understand something we often reject it as being useless or having no value. But that just illuminates our own ignorance.

And I believe that is what is happening here with this coming generation. And they are the future and they have so much to offer. In the 60s when children stood up against systems of authority they were called ‘a bunch of no good hippies!’ In the late 70’s — ‘a bunch of punks.’ So labelling our kids as useless is nothing new. But surely we must demand more of ourselves as adults. Surely, we must listen to this generation and not castigate them with facile pejoratives because we perceive them as different than us.

Be proud of what we created

These snowflakes didn’t arrive by some polar vortex; we created them by how we parented them. We should be proud that they have the confidence to express how they experience the world. And even prouder that they see the world like Gloucester did, in a feeling way.