Interesting points, Lakitha! This topic could be a whole ‘nother article. It seems to come down to any time people use any kind of ‘broad stroke’ label, any attempt to lump a group of people together to talk about them, they’re already messing up. To be fair, who am I when I’m referring to ‘Boomers’? Surely there’s one 60-year-old who gets the nuances of not judging every ‘kid today’ as sensitive pansies. Oh — I just thought of a 60-year-old friend who isn’t very boomer-like at all, so…just further illustrates the fallacy in labeling anyone

Even me saying ‘the kids today’ is unfairly lumping them all together. Is there any one, single characteristic shared by ‘the kids today’ other than their age? My students are so diverse that, at times, they seem to me to have nothing in common with each other other than they’re stuck in my class having to listen to me drivel on and on.

I agree with you, that it’s hard to ‘see’ the incredible strength of the people who are dealing with abuse and bullying and ‘emotional’ difficulties. It’s not as obvious as the strength needed to, say, deal with a physical impairment or feed a family in the middle of the Great Depression. I’ve started to think that I can’t…denigrate one student’s problem just because, on the surface, it doesn’t seem as ‘serious’ as another student’s problem. One of my students was torn up by his girlfriend breaking up with him. He couldn’t think clearly, he couldn’t seem to get his work done because he was just…bogged down in invisible pain. That seemed so minor compared to another student who was dealing with working 2 jobs because he had to feed 4 kids while going to school. But…each student has struggles, and it’s not on me to judge whose struggle is ‘worse’, who should ‘suck it up’ versus who should get lenience because their struggles are more obvious.

I went to a very, upscale private university. When people learn I went there, they likely assume I’m a rich, privileged brat, yet I was the token poor kid. I was the person who often wasn’t sure where I was going to get my next meal. When I started there, I had a big chip on my shoulder because I felt like “those rich kids” had no idea how hard life is and that it wasn’t fair that I was struggling so mightily for things that were handed to them. By the end of my four years, I had changed my mind. I believed I was the one who had it ‘relatively’ easy. I so preferred having to deal with the struggle of making ends meet than the weird, emotional struggles many of them had, dealing with parents who pushed them, whose version of love was really twisted and warped, who made them feel like crap and worthless while simultaneously handing them the keys to a BMW. I was so thankful to just be dealing with how to pay for food — that just seemed so much more simple and straightforward to me. But it took me being around them for me to…stop lumping them together as a bunch of rich kids with silver spoons.

Maybe the so-called boomers and the so-called snowflakes need to spend time together so they’ll all come to see and respect the strength of every individual.

Thank you, Lakitha. You really made me think about this topic even more in-depth…