If you’re a boomer parent, you’ll love this piece. Or at the very least, you’ll surely understand it. It’s by author and lawyer Richard Watts of Santa Ana, California, and we first spotted it on the website of our friends over at NextAvenue.org. Watts offers a generational mea culpa to our millennial kids.
As a boomer parent, I’ve noticed that some of the current conversation between other boomer parents and their Millennial kids centers on what the parents perceive as the younger generation’s impenitent sense of entitlement and a lack of drive and motivation. Well perhaps, in addition, we find them a bit short on ambition, bewildered about a life direction, infected with an obsession for social media and generally lacking perspective.
What is your problem Millennials? We have given you everything!
How We Raised Our Millennial Kids
Growing up, we never got the attention you received. Our parents made us responsible to go figure it out. That caused us continual struggle and disappointment. We rescued you from all of that!
We mapped out your childhood with endless activities, sports, and entertainment. When you were toddlers, we decided what hobbies and sports you would participate in. We were intentional enough to select activities that fit our own passions so we could help you gain proficiency and enjoy the journey while you learned and we participated.
Author Richard Watts
Nothing was too great of a need when it came to your success. Our lofty expectations only matched the potential we saw in you, even if you didn’t see it yourself.
Perhaps, however, it is time for boomer parents to take a good hard look at what we did:
- We decided to give our kids everything we didn’t have, and rejected teaching them some of the hard lessons we did have.
- We insisted our kids succeed and make us proud according to our expectations, no matter how much tough-love parenting we overlooked to ensure that raising them was fun.
- We behaved like drone parents, seeking out and removing obstacles and adversity to their success. Like growing a palm tree indoors, we protected them from the wind, fertilized them and kept the storms away.
Now we push them outside and expect them to handle the gales of real life.
So what can we do this late in the game?
First, let’s take responsibility so the Millennials recognize we caused a problem.
An Apology to Millennials
So here we go. Speaking for my generation of boomer parents …
“Kids, we are sorry. We thought we had your best interest at heart, but in reality, we were making you look good to make us look good. We wanted a best friend and failed to realize that parenting was more valuable to you than our friendship. We let our love for you hijack our parenting skills. We prevented you from experiencing the natural consequences of your own actions. We were afraid to risk your affection when we should have equipped you with the life tools that only come from allowing you to struggle, persist and recover on your own. We felt obligated to explain every time we said ‘No!’ We handed you an allowance when you didn’t do anything for it. We gave you too much and anesthetized your drive. But most egregious, we prevented you from exploring and honing your passions. We put blinders on you to keep your head looking in the direction we carefully mapped and now you are without expression. We are most sincerely sorry and ask you to recognize, accept, and forgive our failure.”
A Promise to Millennials
Next, here is our promise to you going forward:
- We boomer parents will encourage you in whatever endeavor you attempt, whether it is a success or a failure.
- We will only give advice when you ask.
- We will share with you and your children the struggles and setbacks we experienced when we were kids because recognizing and discussing our failures can teach more than boasting about our successes.
- We will withdraw our financial support (perhaps over time), and allow you to feel the struggles, the independence and finally pride that results from victory over adversity.
- We will begin to accept the reality that we boomer parents are only going to be on this planet a short time longer and our lasting legacy will only be the tools and traditions we leave with you, our Millennial children.
Sorry we got a late start at being your parents… but we have never stopped loving you. We were intentionally spoiling you, unintentionally.
Richard Watts is the author of “Entitlemania: How Not to Spoil Your Kids, and What to Do if You Have
Just had this conversation last night with a friend who is a parent of millenials. Very well put.
Please do not speak for all boomer parents. There are many of us boomers who did not do this-especially those of us who raised children not in the millennial era and are now soon to be 40 years old. Some of us did not “get a late start” at all; we knew how to raise our kids to be responsible and successful adults without everything being handed to them, mapping out their lives and have no need for apologies for doing the best we could, with the resources we had and the time we gave to our kids.
I’m with Anna. We are 100% Boomers and did not bring up our children as described in this article, neither did they turn out as described. Looking around me, it seems as if it is the Millennials, not the Boomers, who are bringing their children up as described!
Anna and Carol, “Ditto”. Being a blue-collar worker much of my career, I couldn’t afford to coddle our child that way, nor did we want to. My wife and I made sure she had the essentials, had our support when she did well and our coaching the few times she didn’t. We sat down and worked out what the problem was, gave bits of advice and encouragement while she worked her way through it. Today she is a junior in college for Mechanical Engineering with a side in Computer Science and constantly on the Dean’s List. And an smart and respectful young lady. (And she skis faster than I do, dang it!)
Not all children are brought up the same and I have a daughter who is 31 who is buying her sons anything they want since she feels guilty that her and her husband had been in Iraq to be in war. This starts a bad president. i also think as much as we try to raise our children the way we think is the best, society does play a big role in it. I also think that now people are not speaking to people face to face may also bring a large difference. Closer communication between parents and children will help. I had to work 5 years second shift as an assistant manager while my children were in their teens. I was at home until tbhe youngest went back to school when I went to get my degree during which time I was at home at same time they were. You can only do your best, nature and nurture is not the same for each family. My youngest is a millennial When wee were young we were told or our parents were not to have us watch tv all the time. They can control that but society has crept in and taken over with the internet and other technology which we cant control.
so let THEM (finally) take responsibility
They are responsible for their own obnoxious behavior, not us
get real