This post is not about HB2 or my feelings about why women's restrooms and locker rooms should be free from male genitalia. This post is about how glad I am that I am forty years old. It is about how glad I am that I don't have to grow up right now.
I don't believe there were ever good old days. I grew up in the 80's, and it would be easy for me to think of that as the good old days until I remember the AIDS epidemic and all that came with it. Our parents like to think that the fifties were the good old days, but then they remember segregation the cold war. Think back further, and you have The Great Depression. Go back farther, and you have the Civil War to deal with. Even going way, way back, you will find crucifixion, gladiators, and the entire male population of Sodom wanting to "have their way with" visiting angels. All of that came AFTER the world got so bad that God sent the flood, so imagine what it must have been like before. Have I made my point? There is no time we can point back to and say, "That was the way it was meant to be." Adam and Eve are the only humans who ever had it right, and they blew it. We are all living in the result of their fall.
That said, I am still glad I don't have to grow up today. The world may not have been better 30 years ago, but it was simpler. I didn't have to deal with the anxiety of everyone every day, coming through my computer screen because I didn't have a computer screen. If there was a bully at school, she was only at school. Her bullying couldn't follow me home. If there was a controversial issue in the media, it would likely be addressed on the six o'clock news, which I sometimes watched and sometimes didn't. I wasn't expected to write a succinct but passionate message about it 30 seconds after hearing about it for the first time and then hold to that view forever because it was public record. A guy in my class may have found a magazine somewhere and therefore have been exposed to sexual activity; but there wasn't free access to deviance of every kind all day and all night, rewiring his brain to view me as an object. I didn't have to wonder whether every bite I ate was organic, free trade, ethically sourced, chemically sound, free from bias, or boycotted by some specialized group. If I mouthed off to some friends, it was two or three people who were mad at me. If I had been able to mouth off on social media to everyone I knew, I'm not sure I would have had any friends.
A lot of kids have anxiety disorders, and we act like that is surprising. As an adult, the amount of input I take in during the day can be overwhelming, but I have an adult brain to process it, years of background to have a foundation of evaluation, and adult judgement to know when to turn it all off. Imagine having to process all of that information using only a 13-year-old brain, flooded with hormones, and unsupported by years of background. Imagine believing that you MUST respond to all of it and never turn it off.
Since the onslaught of information isn't going away, we must help kids deal with all of this. We must help them control the amount of input they have to process each day, but it is about more than limiting screen time. We must also have conversations with them to help them process the input. We must ask them reflective questions that guide their thinking about the latest social issue, most recent drama with a friend, and newest reality whatever. We can't hope they will deal with all of those things properly unless we provide them with an intense amount of training. We all got this training; we just got it more slowly. We got it spread out over longer periods of time because our problems were spaced out; they didn't come to us literally at the speed of light. Our lives have gotten busier, and their lives have gotten more complicated. We cannot be too busy to have these conversations.
Look for every teachable moment you can find, and jump on it as quickly as possible.
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