Why Catholic Millennials Need These Four Urgent Life Skills

[redbetta]

Yep, that was my mom. I was exempt from chores growing up so that I could devote more time to studying.

 

[Angel_Gabriel]

I guess I just don’t agree with spending all that time and money studying something that you never really use. I always say I should have just been a Gen Ed major…it least that’s a well rounded education (in theory lol!). But instead I got an ultra specialized degree. Part of that is my fault b/c I was the one who chose it and I should have done more research. But part is also the fault of these colleges not really informing perspective students about how hard/easy it may be to land a job in their area. Will they have to move? How much does it pay typically? All those questions are glossed over all too frequently unfortunately.

 

[Angel_Gabriel]

The cell phone and texting esp has contributed to some Millennials having difficulties interacting with Gen X and Baby Boomers.

Yes, very true. I only got a cell phone when I was out of college. I had a beeper in high school…it was all the rage lol! Even now, I prefer my old land line and although I text and find it useful for some things I also think people overrely on it. And don’t get me started on social media platforms like Facebook…

I cannot tell you how many honor students I have met who do not know how to do the most basic tasks of home- and self-maintenance. All the attention was given to book learning.

This is why I think that getting a limited part time job is good for high school kids. It gives them some spare money and allows them to get used to the workforce without jumping in there with both feet. All my kids will be working a few hrs a week at least and more during breaks. I think a lot of younger adults get so caught up in the culture of high school and college that the reality of the real world is too much for them.

 

[JanetF]

I guess I just don’t agree with spending all that time and money studying something that you never really use.

Well when we boomers went to college it wasn’t as expensive as it is now (my total loan amount was $25K). My daughter’s will be exponentially more. Besides there’s an argument that a liberal arts degree teaches critical thinking…

However, I’m a loud proponent of high school students being informed about vo-tech trades as well as the college option. If you want to do something that requires a college education (teacher), then you go to college, if you want to be a welder, then go to vo-tech. The final outcome should be that the person is employed doing something that they truly enjoy or gain fulfillment from.

 

[Thrstypirate]

This video has some fun insight (and he’s a nice storyteller)

 

[Rhubarb]

Oh I agree. We don’t do enough to prepare students for life.

 

[PetraG]

Oh I agree. We don’t do enough to prepare students for life.

I don’t want to be too hard on people.
I think we sometimes worry so much and do so much about things we are afraid of because we can’t predict them that we sometimes neglect the things we can predict.

Sometimes, too, people forget that cooking and laundry are actual skills that need to be learned. (I knew of a guy who actually got a job as a professor of chemistry who did not know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich! He had never cooked for himself in his life.)

I have a funny story about that, though. One of my relatives was so worried that her sons might do something that would harm her washer that she wouldn’t let them touch it. She insisted that they not do any of their own laundry. They went to college and learned how to do laundry in the dorms. One summer, they finally put a foot down because it was just ridiculous that she wouldn’t let STEM majors touch a common appliance for fear that they’d wreck it. It wasn’t as if they had proposed repairing it!! (Well, and it wasn’t sewing scissors. Nobody touches my sewing scissors, LOL…)

 

[DarkLight]

There’s also the contingent like me where many household skills were pretty much taught just by yelling. I did learn cooking and laundry ok, but as far as time management and household organization? I don’t think I really learned anything other than how to follow a schedule that was set for me and put stuff away when yelled at. A lot of those things seemed to be sort of assumed that you’d just automatically absorb them as you got older. The idea that they were skills you could learn as opposed to things that somehow mysteriously everyone else except me knew how to do automatically was actually a pretty novel idea.

I think the term “adulting” is being used as an acknowledgment that a lot of people of my age feel that, while they were prepared academically, life skills were neglected and we didn’t really learn how to manage on our own. A lot (myself included) also feel like this was combined with a sense that if you weren’t always perfect at everything you were ruining your life forever.

The cell phone and texting esp has contributed to some Millennials having difficulties interacting with Gen X and Baby Boomers.

So yes, the helicopter parenting has been HORRIFIC, but also, some major changes in society have had some negative effects on the Millennials too.

I might add that all the technological changes have really enabled helicopter parents too. The mere fact that you can check in with your child whenever leads to a lot more parents expecting that their child will always be responsive to them, even into young adulthood. A cell phone makes an easy electronic leash for parents who would otherwise have had to wait until both they and the child are in range of a landline.

 

[Canvas]

I had a beeper in high school…

Ahhh…Gen X memories…(I never had a pager but some of my friends did)

 

[ColorMomma]

43 here. I agree about cell phones. When I was in college, the internet was “new.”

As a teacher, Snap Chat and other social media sites are scary and cause lots of problems. It is hard to be a kid these days. In the old days, if you were getting bullied, at least it was mostly face to face.

 

[ColorMomma]

I am an art teacher and I can attest to the fact that helicopter parents are alive and well. I have several students who haven’t turned in work and thus have a D or F in my class. I’ve fielded about 10 emails and phone calls this week (Semester ends on Friday) from parents who can’t understand how their their child could be failing art. Isn’t art supposed to be fun? Well, yes it is, but it is also requires critical problem solving, persistence, and thinking creatively. I can’t grade things that aren’t turned in.

 

[Angel_Gabriel]

I might add that all the technological changes have really enabled helicopter parents too. The mere fact that you can check in with your child whenever leads to a lot more parents expecting that their child will always be responsive to them, even into young adulthood. A cell phone makes an easy electronic leash for parents who would otherwise have had to wait until both they and the child are in range of a landline.

Yeah I think it’s hard for some parents to let go. I don’t think they remember that we managed just fine with ye old pay phone…every now and then I still see an abandoned pay phone booth that hasn’t been removed…an homage to the past

 

[ColorMomma]

I’m teaching my students things that my mom taught me. How to wring out a rag, how to sweep debris into a pile, how to sort, and how to wash walls. Many many students have never done these things before. Classroom clean-up day is always very interesting. It is abundantly clear who does chores at home, and who does not. It is good for kids. They need to know these things.

 

[DarkLight]

I think one of the advantages of the internet is a lot more people find each other or find people who are going through the same things. And sometimes anonymity can be good. It’s a lot easier to go on the internet behind a screen name and say “I can’t for the life of me manage to keep a clean house and I don’t know what’s wrong with me” than to seek help in person.

 

[blackforest]

I’m critical of the helicopter parenting but also compassionate toward the parents. It doesn’t help that we parents have been under PRESSURE to parent this way from other parents, schools, and even sometimes law enforcement. (For the latter, there’s been plenty of recent attention given to families harassed for allowing their children to walk to school alone). And now, no thanks to the Internet and social media, we’re under the microscope and shamed if we’re doing it “wrong.”

I’m sure that however I’m raising my children is going to screw them up in some ways . . . and hopefully benefit them in others. None of us really know what the fart we’re doing. We just know we’re doing the best we can, with God’s help.

 

[Annie]

. If they did, there are still plenty of areas with cheap housing in USA, but people want to continue to live where they are living

We moved to a place with cheap housing so we could homeschool. Then the recession came and my husband lost his job and could not find another

 

[Annie]

The amount expected in order to get into college has increased a lot, and even the amount expected after you get out of college.

When I was young, in the 1970s, everyone had a job, and the guys spent a lot of time fixing up the old cars they bought with the money from their jobs. No more! You have to have top grades in top courses to get into colleges that offer financial aid.

And in a tourist area I have known through all these decades… The summer jobs used to be taken by college students to supplement what they made in school to help defray the expenses. Now those jobs are filled by foreign students because college students need internships (usually unpaid) to put on their resumes to get jobs. Of course, they also make better contacts through the internships as well.

I am a tail-end Baby Boomer (the ones who got all the bad stuff and none of the good stuff), and I definitely think it is harder on kids nowadays than it was when I was young.

 

[DarkLight]

We moved to a place with cheap housing so we could homeschool. Then the recession came and my husband lost his job and could not find another

Yes, I found that as a young adult as well, as did several others I knew. Moving to a higher cost of living area meant access to jobs where you could actually work your way up, as well as better access to classes and training programs. Low cost of living was usually combined with areas where there weren’t a lot of jobs other than Walmart and similar. Especially not entry level jobs with opportunities for advancement.

 

[JanetF]

I am a tail-end Baby Boomer (the ones who got all the bad stuff and none of the good stuff), and I definitely think it is harder on kids nowadays than it was when I was young.

Same here and I totally agree. My daughter is a junior in college and is starting to panic a little about being able to find a job, sigh

 

[DarkLight]

Looking at the article a little more closely… I feel like it misses the reasons why on some things. Many of my generation spent our childhoods with the idea that if we didn’t have good grades in everything all the time and fill our lives with the right activities, we’d never get anywhere. And frankly the high school and college system encourages this. I remember being worried about my scholarship (that was paying most of my tuition) because I got a B-. In a math class that was way harder than what I needed to take. The lesson was definitely “it’s better to stick with what’s safe, because if you fail you’ll end up stuck at McDonald’s at 40 and it will be all your fault.”

The hard lesson of adulthood was as much when to say I can’t do that or this is good enough. You can’t do everything and be the best at it all the time.