It couldn’t be more perfect if it was a full-fledged conspiracy that had the singular purpose of keeping our children helpless.  They simply cannot deal with the unpredictable, the uncharted, the unfamiliar.  We have taken away their capacity to think on their feet.  They have been understood and collaborated with to a point where they are ineffective at navigating even the most innocent of confusing situations.  Their brains freeze up and they lurch to some bizarre response, pursue fight or flight or simply have the deer in the headlights look that says we have enabled them to the point of possible no-return.

Two examples: One young man was ready to leave the program and be employed full-time at a job we had lined up for him.  19 years-old and being given the opportunity to earn $28,000 a year plus benefits.  To see if he was ready, we gave him one last real life test.  It was a Thursday and he had just told one of the staff members that there was no way he would blow this chance.  He came by the office and jokingly said something borderline inappropriate to the boss.  He was immediately confronted and told that he needed to rethink what had just happened and come up with a better response.  He looked lost.  Again, it was demanded that he make a different choice.  Out comes the old behavior - oppositional, screw you, “I have no idea what you are talking about”, you can’t tell me what to do.  One last time, a directive to fix this and still he was blank.  In 120 seconds, he had blown a pretty sweet deal.

Another young man was volunteering at a startup program that had just received funding.  As such, there was no equipment yet, no routine established, no official start date.  His response was to say that the situation was “fishy” - how could a program have no equipment?  It was as if he thought that we are all just dropped into situations where everything we need is already there.  He was literally overwhelmed with the idea that nothing was ready yet and it was going to have to be created each day.  He quit.  Full-time job, money for college, high demand skills being taught, all weeks away, and he could not deal with the uncertainty that it wasn’t there this minute.

We have done this to them.  We have rendered our children impotent in the face of the spontaneous, the unusual, the seemingly incomprehensible.  We have robbed them of what is necessary to be creative, patient, visionary.  What is it that we get out of making our young people helpless?  What grand advantage, what sick rationalization, what pathological need moves us to ensure that our children are ill-equipped to navigate the parts of life that are potentially the most exciting, rewarding, open-ended, change producing? 

To their kids, dads are often bigger than life.  They are influential in ways they might not be aware of… the following is a letter from a 10 year-old to his dad.

“Dear Dad,

I haven’t been acting to good the last couple of weeks.  I have been talking smart and having a bad attitude toward some things but I think you should not fly off the handle and start to yell at me.  You should listen to what I have to say.  example.  Yesterday you said nobody did anything in the way of helping around the house and you started to yell and I was about to say Jerry and I worked for an hour.  You didn’t let me say anything and got mad.  You always say I get mad and be a bad sport (no offence) but you also get mad and pouty and on sundays you are so edgy and say things about mom and swear.  You say not to say dirty words and stuff when I do it yet you do it.  I tell you about it but you say I make you mad and that’s true but have you ever thought that we do it because were mad.  It doesn’t only apply to children.  You end up punishing us without punishment.  I will try to do better and I would like it if you did to.  Love, your son Bobby.”

There is a lot of cliché advice out there but most of it is sanitized pabulum.  It is the empty feel good stuff.  You don’t have to think too much, you don’t have to do anything differently, you don’t have to do any heavy lifting.  Apparently, it tells parents and societal helpers what they want to hear free of controversy, conflict or the need to change the status quo.

A great example of this is when we are told that it is a good idea for families to have meal time together.  And then the authors cite all the benefits of sitting down together.  Or the big push for mentors and how just hanging out with kids can turn their lives around.

The fact is that a number of large studies on mentoring conclude that mentoring in and of itself isn’t all that effective.  It is much more than the relationship and simply being ourselves.  If mentors are not active change agents, engaging kids in a new way of thinking, provoking them to relish the exploration of the unknown, motivating them to question the suffocation of their own little boxes, teaching them to welcome and thrive in the unpredictable, then what’s the point?

The family sitting down to eat together and perpetuating all the negative patterns of behavior is useful how?  If I have a captive audience and I don’t use the precious time for something extraordinary, then it is just another notch on the belt of mediocrity.  Sis-boom-bah.

Are we really that frightened of mixing it up with the kids?  We need someone to let us off the hook with the emptiness of “why can’t we all just get along?”  It is not always about taking the path of least resistance.  Sometimes it is about cooking up something unforseen, experimental, pioneering and outside our own limited, protective little shells.  Bon appétit.

The week before last I met with 9 teenagers and young adults.  I offered them the opportunity of a lifetime.  A full-time job for 47 weeks.  The experience of building a new house from scratch with green technology and renewable energy applications.  The ability to earn $2400 each for college.  The promise of assistance to find employment and/or college admission at the end of the 47 weeks.  And a variety of support and incentives along the way.

After the meeting, it was obvious they were excited about being a part of a project that was bigger than any one person.  Each had expressed the fact it was difficult for them to find employment and no job possibility had the perks this one did.  They were ready to go, they said.  They were told the interview process would be intense, in part, because the opportunity was great.  I scheduled an individual meeting with each for last Tuesday, June 2nd.

By June 2nd, one was in jail, one decided to work a cash job for the day thinking he could reschedule the interview at the last minute and one was angry, defiant and acting entitled and even after being asked to take a break and come back and try it again, he was unable to present himself appropriately.  The other six were barely prepared and will be offered a second interview with no guarantees.

For 27 years, I have heard all the arguments about being positive, talking to kids about success, building their self-confidence, doing the “you can do it” pumping.  But that is the easy work.  It’s clean and nice and uplifting.

None of this will be effective unless we are willing to address the power of failure and the reality of sabotage and self-defeating behavior which permeates many of this generation of kids.  Failure is not just the end result; it is the thinking process along the way.  We grossly underestimate its active presence.  By doing so, we fail our children.

Who is going to dare to crawl into the interconnected caves of their minds, whether invited or not, to see what lurks there and to do battle with the patterns of thought that foment the destruction of opportunity?  Who is going to wade into the cesspool of their unacceptable behavior and tell them in no uncertain terms, “not on my watch”?  Who has the guts to take on empty vessels that care for little, want for nothing, in order to demonstrate that there is a higher authority based upon principle and value and seniority?  If not parentwarriors, then who?