When you swap security for expediency, and there’s no such thing as ‘a job for life’...

When you swap strong families for quick pleasure, to go cheating around on your wife...

When you pursue money at the harm of nature, and the climate starts to change...

When you swap greed for integrity, then moral codes start to misarrange...

When you swap stability for convenience, bedrocks for community start to disband...

It’s no wonder our young ones are fragile, it’s a shaky foundation for them to stand.

I find these crazy kids today to be exactly like the crazy kids of yesterday, except a

little taller, and on average wider.

I see smart ones, dumb ones, lazy ones, athletic ones, and talented ones. They appear to me exactly like the ones I used to know.

The ones I am privileged to meet are not the lazy, disconnected ones I hear about, just as we were not the lazy, disconnected kids our grandparents complained about. Televisions did not ruin us, and phones will not ruin them. They are mostly kind to each other, respectful with strangers, and competent with tasks. They are technically superior by necessity, but will still dig in and do the manual, physical jobs that previous gens are growing too old to do.

Immature? Sure, but it is their time to be. Let them have it.

They are navigating a new world, just as we did, but they are good people, and will find the right way. I would proudly lead them into battle, or follow them into peace.

Good stuff these kids today, but they should be... they come from pretty good stock.

Kids these days

matcha lattes for the millennials

and TikTok for Gen Z

Instagram influencers and

air fryers and skateboarders

mortgages through the roof

health care bankrupting youth

student loans and

racial tension

we’ve been left

a ruined planet

for how frivolous we are

we are fighting

for basic things

a life worth living

Kids these days are given the world; it is ablaze, ferocious and rampant. The legacies we hope to leave behind, etched away by our own willful ignorance, our haughty vaingloriousness; interminable, rapacious--grasping, we kowtow to the idols we've built,

to a life we've grown accustomed to. We so brazenly and so shamelessly have the audacity to hand our posterity a world that is on the verge of collaspe. Where is the urgency? Where is our compassion? Our fecklessness will be their cross to bear.

As someone who works in two seperate treatment centers I have had the amazing opportunity to work with some great kids. Some are a handful and annoying beyond belief. And there is one common denominator I can find among all the kids. They all just want somebody to love them. Thanks to their upbringings though they don't know how to get love. Parents these days are the bigger problem, they don't parent their kids. They are either trying to be the best friend while their kids get drunk, do drugs, or steal. Or they are so abusive that kids go in to survival mode just to make it through the next day. It's not the kids fault its parents who dont know the line between friendship and parenting, or abuse and a punishment.

I'm sorry I know this is kind of all over the place. But when you work where I do you learn that almost everything a troubled kid does is a cry for help. And most of the time those cries for help stem from something a parent isn't doing for that kid.

Now don't get me wrong, I've seen some amazing parents who have done all they can for their kids but nothing works. And those kids are generally the adopted ones. A lot of times they don't believe that anyone can love them because their birth parents gave them up. Whether that was for better or worse is besides the point. The kid doesn't know that, they just know they were given up.

In the end it's not the kids. Its situations that create mental trauma and issues in a world where almost nobody cares to help them.

Kids these days are kids.

Everyone was once seens as "kids these days"

Kids these days aren't perfect;

But they never have been.

Parents these days aren't perfect:

But they never have been.

We are all trying and that's the point.

Waiting for life to go on,

I know someday I will be drawing straight lines.

I know I will work past 9 to 5.

I know I will die.

They think children don't understand these things yet.

But we do.

We sense pleasure.

We sense pain.

Some of us are more adult than you think.

I can't do taxes

Or drive a car.

And I'm probably just wasting my life,

But I can solder quite well

And understand sports medicine better than my parents.

I have a grasp on architecture

And have done extensive research on poisonous plants for no particular reason.

But they don't know this.

I won't get into MENSA like my aunt.

I won't be able to make a VCO as quick as dad.

I won't be able to become a college professor like mom.

But I can observe better than they can,

Like all other children.

Kids these days don't live like kids. I'm not saying the music they listen to has to be the same or that they must leave behind their technological devices for fresh air and socializing, but their mindset should be relaxed. It should be worry-free and it should be about wants not needs. When we become an adult, life gets harder because we realize we have to prioritize the things we can do and make sacrifices and compromises in order to survive and fulfill our needs. That's not a burden we should carry as children. Yet, the more I look at kids these days - they do.

expectations

and rigged ideas of normalcy

weigh us down like anchors on a sinking ship,

passengers confined to flooding suites.

there is only one path to succes,

the rest remains untold

untaught

unexposed

you are a beautiful woman, they shout

boys don’t cry, they whisper

do not row the same broken boat,

you are better

brighter

breathtaking

our hearts hold tsunamis of emotion,

but our walls are built too high

and too strong

i will not let you in

“kids these days”, they mumble

they don’t know the half of it

but i thank them for their anchors

#poetry

Kids these days seem to be more alive,

maybe that’s because I’m getting older

and havent felt the liveliness

or the youthful innocence

in many long years.

Their laughter brings me such joy

as I remember the "good ole days"

of finding great joy

in the smallest of things.

Don't even get me started on the young ones,

the toddlers and the tykes,

who I absolutely adore.

Kids are life's greatest gift,

blessing us all with their charm and wit.