Do you remember the song from Bye, Bye Birdie?? Here’s the clip in case (by the way, love the line about how will we beat the Russians. Yikes.)

I feel like everyday when I open my FB feed there are at least 10 articles written by expert Hoody Hah from the University of Know It All telling me, in no uncertain terms, why kids today are the worst and if we don’t do something fast it will be the end of human kind as we know it.

It’s the fault of everything from the internet, to the fidget spinners, to entitlement, to all the awards they get, to over protective parents. OR, it’s the fault of government, the media, under-performing schools and poor nutrition. And gluten.

OR it’s the fault of parents who work too much, parents who are on their phones too much, parents who are too lenient, parents who are too strict, parents who neglect or parents who helicopter.

Because you’re either doing something wrong or something in your environment is but good golly, Friends, we’re all screwed.

Huh.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? I mean, the very first article like this, most likely written in hieroglyphics on a cave wall, probably went something like this (in pictures of course):

New Study Shows that The invention of Letters to Express Thought Will Make Kids Dumb

Or how about this:

Invention of Fire causing Laziness in Next Generation as They Get Soft Being Raised on Cooked Food

Or:

Invention of Spear robbing Next Generation of Joy of Killing Bear with Bare Hands

The cave parents were terrified. What are we doing to our babies? How could we be so wrong about so many things? The generation that came before us was so much better. And smarter.

Except for they weren’t. Not in any way. And every previous generation is sure that if parents would just listen to them, it would all be perfect. Well, except for you raised this generation and they’re not perfect but who wants to get hung up on semantics?

So I want to just go on record, right now: you’re not doing anything wrong, Parents of The World. Oh, and also, too, you’re doing EVERYTHING wrong. Because you are (wait for it) PEOPLE.

I love how it was so beautifully pointed out to me years ago in a great book called Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas: “if God had wanted perfect parents he would have chosen something other than other humans to raise them” (or something like that I read that book a long time ago).

So yes, read the articles, educate yourself, and of course, always look for new and better ways of doing things. We really are getting closer to getting it right all the time!

But if you’re doing your best and you love your kids, it’s really going to be OK. And you’ll grow old and so will they. And you’ll nod along with articles that talk about how screwed up the next generation is. But maybe don’t. Because maybe remember that you were the next generation once. And you were screwed up, too.