Teaching Our Children the Value of Hard Work ^Featured

The Millennial Generation is the generation of children born of Baby Boomers, brought up with overwhelming mass media and technology. They also have not, through our mistakes as their parents, learned the value of hard work.

If you have a millennial child, you probably set out with the best of intentions. You bought them the latest toys, made sure they had all of the things that you didn’t have as a child. You wanted them to be happy.

If they participated in a sport or activity, sometimes the teams didn’t keep score. Sometimes nobody was “out”. Everybody had a chance to participate and every single kid got a trophy when they were finished. There were no losers.

I’m not sure why we went along with this, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. As our kids get older, the effects don’t seem quite as appealing. They have a sense of entitlement and don’t want to take on responsibility. They don’t realize that they can fail. They are materialistic, yet unrealistic about the behaviors needed in the workplace to earn the money to make the purchases.

These children get to college and simply expect to have the diploma handed to them. Working for the grades is optional. It is more important to focus on themselves and what they want than on anything else. They have been referred to as “Generation Me”.

My children are of this generation. Now, as they are in high school and college, I am seeing some of these characteristics. However, we tried to balance the “everybody wins” with “hard work equals success”. In some things it worked; in other ways it did not.

My oldest has learned that he has to work for good grades and that good grades will equal a better job. A better job means he will be able to afford an apartment and still be able to eat out once in a while. He has worked throughout his college career and I can see that he finally gets it. My youngest wants it all. He wants it now. And he does not want to have to clean his room, mow the lawn, or basically do anything but text his friends to get it. We’re working on that.

But Millennials aren’t all narcissistic materialists. They have good qualities as well. They are more tolerant of differences in people. They are supportive of gay rights. They are open-minded. They can be confident and interested in ways to make a difference in this world.

Sociologists can debate all they want if these kids are all one way or all another, but the bottom line is that, as their family, we need to make sure they have a good moral compass. We need to teach them the relationship between hard work and reward. We need to teach them that not every player on the team gets to play and only a few will get trophies. We need to teach them that life keeps score.

It is never too late to talk about this. Open the communication and try not to get frustrated. And if you are raising your children now… make sure the team they play on keeps score.