Teacup Kids: A Diatribe That Will Be on the Cutting Room Floor
The first draft of my novels tend to grab concerns from my subconscious and toss them out. Sometimes that fits into the story. Sometimes it doesn't. This is part of a scene from my Work In Process, and it will probably get cut, but I like the conversation.
“Tell me about Amelia.”
Surprisingly, he wanted to, and words poured out of him. "She's not a little saint, but she's not a bad kid, about as good as we could hope for, actually. She's eleven now, starting to notice boys, dressing like a teenager, asserting her independence. Not always happy to have mom and dad with her out in public anymore. She's getting close to shoot the rapids time, when we don't have much influence on her anymore and she's alone in a sea of social pressures most of her days, when no matter how hard we try we're outside her life and we have to hope we've given her good example to follow, put a script in her head that guides her through to the other side. It's weird. Her mom still reads to her every night, but we feel the distance growing, the parts of her life we have no clue about."
"That early?"
"Yeah. It keeps getting earlier every year and keeps getting longer, the time before they're out of danger. It's into the twenties now. Most kids used to screw up in their mid-teens if they were going to. Now they can go along okay until they get out of college, get out in the real world, then fall apart on contact with a world where no one has to put up with them, where they have to work hard every day and nobody cares about their self-esteem. People are calling these kids the teacup generation because so many of them are fragile, fall apart when they run into the real world and people who don't like them, don't tell them they're special when they aren't, force them to do stuff even when it's hard, only pay them when they do hard stuff because easy stuff they can do on their own."
"That's reassuring," Suzanne said. "I was hoping for a nice little story about my wonderful niece and I get 'these kids are going to hell in a hand-basket.' You do realize you sound like sixty-something?"
Greg grinned. "Yeah, I probably do. I think Amelia will be okay. She still loves to learn. School tries to kill that, you know, tries to turn it into a chore, something to be avoided if possible. That's the big thing we've done right so far, nourishing love of learning, letting her see it can be as much fun as TV. Even that is hard. There is a whole level of life going on that parents can't be a part of, whole communications systems that the kids have and most parents are only vaguely aware of. Kids figure out the new technology years before adults in their lives do, and by the time their parents catch up they're on to the next set of tech. They're in constant communication with their friends, almost a hive mind now, no time to think for themselves, no time away from their friends and the distractions where they can concentrate on anything. And it's addictive, way more addictive than the Internet. Most kids are hooked by the time they're in grade school, feel like they're cut off when they aren't immersed in the flood of information all the time, don't know what to do when it isn't there."
"Can't you cut her off from it, give her space? If I had a kid, she wouldn't have a cell phone until she hit sixteen. No Internet except for what she has to have for school until she's at least a teenager. Maybe an hour of TV a night."
"And you would spend most of your non-working hours enforcing that. She would feel cut off from her classmates. She would be cut off from her classmates. She would be the one they all talked about, on Facebook or text messages, or whatever new tech has replaced them by the time you figured those things out. She wouldn't be part of any of the cliques. She would be the one who couldn't join in when they talked about what happened on their favorite shows last night, didn't get the cultural references. We try to give her space from the spew, time away to think. Sometimes it works. Sometimes she comes back and works twice as hard to be part of her peer group, to know who hates each other and who is best friends and who is about to break up and what happened on the reality show of the week."
Greg sat on the edge of the cot. "Being a parent is terrifying these days. We can sit in the same house, but she isn't really there. None of us are really there. We're each in our own electronic world, physically close, but with no meaningful contact. We try to set a good example, but we're addicted too. We're not as bad as she is, but when my favorite show is on I'm not in the mood for conversation. We sit in the same living room all evening and don’t say a meaningful word to one another. We catch ourselves doing that and try to fight it, to find ways to cut off the flow for a while. It's tough though. Parents face the same issues in a different world. Our friends are online too, and we have the same pressures to keep up with them, to be a part of our groups. Take too much time away and you aren't one of them anymore. What percentage of what you say or listen to is electronic, not in person?"
"Too much."
"Everybody's does it. I sit on a couch with Amelia and text her instead of talking. How absurd is that?"
"And you're saying you can't control any of this?"
"I'm saying that you pay a price. It may not be worth the price."
"How does this make kids the teacup generation?"
"It means that parents can't be part of the kids' worlds but the kid can always reach their parents if they need help. That doesn't work with the world of their peers because going to your parents is the thermonuclear option. If a kid does that, they're out. But using parents against other adults, that's part of the game, and when a teacher does something the kid doesn't like, the kid can be on the phone next time the teacher's back is turned. Too many parents swoop in to rescue the kid. Helicopter parents. Always there to rescue their kids from the consequences of what they did. And then little Johnny grows up into a world where mommy can't save him. Kids used to grow up tough. Now they grow up fragile, like a teacup."