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June 8, 2005Kids are insane? Yes, but some are recovering. I think.You must understand, I just spent a better part of the afternoon driving Buster and his crowd around. Now, they’re not children - they’re young men of 16 and 17, all of them very mannerly toward me, but if you listen to their conversations - as I was forced t0 - you realize that they are quite, quite mad, all of them. But only to a point. Today, Gerard Vanderleun is writing about the madness of children, and reading it brought me back to the days when my elder son, deprived of his video games for a week, would sit on the couch and play them in his head, his little hands simulating the use of buzzers and joysticks. I remembered Buster decked out in his favorite outfit (Cowboy boots, flannel pajama bottoms, a leather jacket with chained wallet, a strange, Amish-looking hat and sunglasses) at age 6. Yes, they’re nuts. Certifiable. And age only refines the madness - it doesn’t dispel it. I know that in our frantic efforts to get the control over our insane children back from the experts and government agenicies to whom we’ve ceded it, we have often resorted to drugs, but surely some simple behavioral modification techniques can be employed to return them to sanity. Perhaps using the word “No” as a functional part of the conversation would help. Alas, that seems doomed to failure as long as the word “No” functions only to instill in children the rudiments of a gambling addiction. Think about your own children or children you have observed in the full grip of a “I want this useless cheap crappy thing or I’ll die now” dementia. Do you ever see “No” used as a final answer? If you have then you have also seen winged monkeys thrashing about in pants. Nope. Adults who tell demented children “No” are seen by those children as mere slot-machines: This is made even more of a certainty since children, being functionally insane, cannot have or hold jobs and hence have no cash whatsoever. This makes them persistent and tireless negotiators. Another example of how demented children are can be seen in their fashion sense. Yes, from the time they learn to fasten their shoes little Velcro flaps (Another indulgence we’ve made so they don’t ever have to suffer learning how to tie a bowknot lest their intellects crumble under the effort.), children left to dress themselves will come up with outfits fit to inspire circus clowns. So unremittingly awful is a child’s insane ideas about couture that mothers will go to extraordinary lengths to dissuade them from appearing outside the bedroom closet in certain combinations. Indeed, the dictum of “You are not going ANYWHERE dressed like that!” seems to be the only requirement still enforced by parents. Yet, every so often, one does slip through to a school — probably because the parents were in a coma when the child left — where the afflicted child promptly becomes the envy of his fellow inmates. “Man, underwear over the plaid pants. Cool!” My elder son and his friend tend to be more libertarian in their leanings. Buster and his friends, though only 4 years younger, tend to look at “that” generation of 20 year-olds as creative but hopelessly geekish; they tend to themselves embrace a more Limbaughian philosophy of conservatism but with manners and old-fashioned etiquettes. To a one, they all wish that long-gone ideas re “ladylike” and “gentlemanly” behavior would re-emerge. They want to dress nicely, and not wear boxer shorts over their jeans. They’re tired of hip-hop and the whole gangsta/pimp/ho/moneyflash scene that is so tiresomely pervasive. And they want girls who have some self-respect. What I notice most, when I eavesdrop on their conversations (it’s not really eavesdropping if they are bellowing to each other in what they consider “conversational” tones, though) is their common sense. They dismiss a great deal of what they hear in the press and even in their classes as nonsense, and seem to be thinking for themselves. They tell me they are a minority in school, but they seem to be quite a big gang of kids, so I dunno. Perhaps sanity is beginning, slowly, to creep back into the teen culture, but I think it will always be a rather “underground” sort of sanity, embraced by kids who are resolutely counter-cultural, which these days means…let’s face it…manly-but-courtly, and un-PC-friendly. Buster has found a nice, Catholic girl who actually goes to church willingly, and whose father enforces a curfew and insists on driving them to and from wherever they are going. I am grateful…and to be honest, Buster is, too. Having rules and parameters and supervision takes a lot of pressure off of kids. As they wend their way throught the minefields of adolescence and young adulthood, rules and raised eyebrows go a long way toward helping them navigate. I wish more parents understood just how badly their older kids need them. In some ways a 16 year old needs Mom and Dad and a sense of order more than does a ten year old. Anyway, excuse me for going off topic. Go read Vanderleun. He’s not only amusing, but wise. http://theanchoressonline.com/2005/06/08/kids-are-insane-yes-but-some-are-recovering-i-think/trackback/ 11 Responses to “Kids are insane? Yes, but some are recovering. I think.” |
June 8th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
Kids Today
THEY SAY IT IS AN INTELLECTUAL FLAW to let things go “in one ear and out the other,” but at my age it is merely a question of deciding what to admit onto the hard drive of my brain. It’s a limited drive and at this point it is pretty much full. To w…
June 8th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
You’re right. Some sanity is returning. Having ‘children’ ranging in age from 42 to 20 (boys) I can see quite large changes in attitudes, outlook, etc.
The 20 yr old is indeed courtly and he doesn’t smoke or use drugs. Someone did give him a bottle of champagne for his b’day.
He is determined to remain a gentleman until such time as life calls him to the married state. He comes to church and plays the organ when he’s home from school (he belongs to a music fraternity), but doesn’t find college conducive to a spiritual life. He talks about converting to Catholicism sometimes…
He’s a serious, witty person with wide ranging interests — intellectual interests, anyway — he doesn’t know anything about sports. Not surprising since his mother thinks heavy exercise is moving the Oxford dictionary across the room.
I like these new kids. Mine is in the midst of writing a P G Woodhouse story. Since he’s read them all, he figures he’ll have to write them if he wants to have any more of them. In this one, Bertie is off to the front.
BTW, he and his male friends are sometimes taken aback at some of the mean-spirited girls they’ve encountered. That may be something new also?
June 8th, 2005 at 7:58 pm
When were kids, my brother and I dressed with Buster’s sense of style- only we wore work helmets and carried around badminton raquets- in case were overcome with the desire to beat on each other.
That happened a lot.
June 8th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
You give me hope for my daughter’s future, Anchoress. I hope she finds a young man like your Buster when she’s old enough to date. For now, at 11, she is enduring a long hot summer of grounded from practically everything except books and gymnastics (because she wants to pursue a college scholarship in that sport) because of a violation of the internet use rules at our house. She’ll never do it again, and she knows that “no” is a functional word in our house.
June 8th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
Well, I’m 19-more-than-a-half and I can say that there are many girls on my campus who are very dissatisfied with the lack of dating on our campus. However, IMO, they haven’t quite gotten to the point of really accepting and putting into practice the theory that guys will work harder if girls have higher standards ie no “hookups”.
I don’t know if it’s related but I’m hearing more and more of the “I’ll only go out with someone I’d consider marrying” line from the Christian youth groups. That mentality seems to be on the rise, which is interesting. There is one boy I know from the Catholic center who will only date Catholic girls for that reason (no, he’s not asked me yet). I’ve never met any one who had that kind of policy before and now I know at least three or four, mostly Evangelicals or thereabouts.
(dymphna — a guy who writes Wodehouse stories?! I’m impressed! If I ever met a guy around here who even READ Wodehouse I’d latch on and not let go!
June 8th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
Wodehouse is what happens when you don’t have a TV…also SJ Perlman, Pogo, PJ O’Rourke, etc…and writing your own sonnets to a red-haired girl and a 25 chapter book about a bird’s adventures. That was when he was ten. Also the year he found a book of WW One poets and decided he was born too late…
Here’s another side of “I’ll only go out with someone I’d considering marrying…”
…son stops girl after class and asks if she wants to go get some coffee and discuss class notes. Girl tells him she’s not dating. Son, stupified, reminds girl that coffee is not marriage, it’s caffeine. Girl doesn’t laugh. Son tiptoes away…
Much as this generation reminds me of the ’50’s in some ways, it’s also strange. Nice, but strange.
June 9th, 2005 at 12:34 am
Dymphna! Both my sons LOVE Wodehouse!
It’s a TREND!
June 9th, 2005 at 5:11 am
Anchoress, to me Wodehouse is the best writer in the English language. He should have won the Nobel prize for literature, but he was a comedian and comedy gets no respect. And Dymphna, Bertie and his friends at the front during the war? Oh my sainted Aunt!
June 9th, 2005 at 11:49 am
I approached parenthood with boundless optimism and confidence. Shortly after my son’s birth, it became apparent that I was an idiot and a danger to my child. Over time, I learned to do no harm, or to at least strive in that direction. My mother gave me sage advice when I complained that my then three preschoolers were frequently on the verge of killing themselves. In a patient voice and tenor of someone addressing the mentally deficient, she told me to “keep saving their lives.”
I took comfort in that and set as my goal to keep them alive, fed and healthy until age 18. Everything else would be gravy. So far so good. The youngest leaves for school this fall. All are healthy. None, to my knowledge, are sociopaths. I’d like to take credit, but I suspect that I’m merely lucky and I don’t want to jinx things. They might come back.
June 9th, 2005 at 1:13 pm
Old Dad, THANK YOU for one of the most charming spins on parenting I’ve ever read. You made me laugh out loud…and I kinda needed it today!
June 9th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
This is why…
… I have dogs, not children (The Anchoress notwithstanding).