In celebration of youth (but not like you think)

I have been thinking a lot about boundaries, resilience, and parenting young adults lately.

Disclaimers first: all I know about these things is experimental. I attempt to set and hold boundaries. I parent for resilience. And I really only parented the one child. In short: I am no expert.

Here’s what I want to say: I am in awe of Generation Z.

We have “gifted” them a mess of a world with issues we ourselves did not attempt to address, even as we identified and diagnosed them. We criticize them for not living up to advice that might have worked 20-30 years ago, but that definitively has proven to be obsolete. We admonish them for having anxiety, for rejecting our solutions, for seeking out their own paths.

Part of this is the age-old changing of the guards. Youngsters rejecting the ways of their elders.

But part of this is new. We have created an unprecedented chaos for the young to deal with. Of course they are anxious. Of course they see our advice as ill-fitting and probably wrong. And still they engage constructively and creatively and with humor. Calling us out. Setting boundaries. Challenging our sexism and racism and ableism and classism and fat phobia and general BS, often by just being who they are.

I know that this is a rose-colored view of youth. That mental health amongst young adults and teenagers is on the decline. That they are hurting and anxious and scared. Frankly, so am I.

What I am in awe of is how this generation is able to sit in the muck we left them and still love. Because that is what they are going to need to survive: the ability to love hard.

And from where I’m sitting, it looks like they have it.