No surprises (only disappointment) in this article on Upworthy.

The article is about a viral video on Tik Tok by Lisa Conselatore, an experienced teacher.

Her point is that everyone is blaming the epidemic of misbehaviour and disrespect by children today on COVID, whereas it is actually and issue of culture and bad parenting. Parents want to be their kids' friends more than they want to be their parents. As a result, they do not discipline their offspring at home, so that when they go to school and then to work they do not have the necessary social skills and attitude to succeed. Lisa Conselatore talks, in her video, about kids believing that they are always the most important person in any room; whatever happened to the Victorian idea that children should be seen and not heard? Children brought up with this severely mistaken attitude have serious problems coping with being in the same room as another child who also thinks they are the most important person there. At work, in a meeting, this attitude results in chaos.

It is, of course, possible to be your child's friend, but not at the expense of being their parent; this is similar to the balancing act of being someone's boss as well as their friend: it is possible, but requires care, so that the person (child or employee) is always clear when they are being spoken to by their parent/boss, and when by their friend. Some people cannot manage this balance; for those people the message is clear: being the parent or boss is more important than being the friend, so stick with that.

This can also be seen as a problem of conflict avoidance by parents. We see, time and time again, how parents will avoid enforcing discipline (especially in public) so that they (and bystanders) don't have to suffer the tears and tantrums they know will result. As everyone should understand, every battle over discipline that is deferred is a battle doubled; giving way rewards the child for bad behaviour and reinforces that behaviour; winning that lost ground back is very hard.

COVID is part of the mix, in that children spent more of their time at home instead of at school, summer camp, playing sport or hanging out with friends, thus exposing them to more bad parenting.

We are now raising a generation of children who are ineducable and unemployable. This is doing them no favours in their adult life. The attitudes with which we are imbuing our kids are probably the main cause of the entitlement that is so rife in the workplace and so evident on the Internet.