Compared to ten, twenty years ago, and/or when you were this age, do you find the average twelve to eighteen year old more or less appealing?

I find them less appealing in the sense that they're ruled by texting and various electronic devices that divert their attention away from all else.

On the other hand, I find today's youth more appealing than those of my own generation--they do seem to have more camraderie and respect for diversity/each other's differences than teens of the past. They're more of an accepting group.

This generation seems to be more mixed up by the media. And they have poor listening skills. I can be talking, they will be looking at me, then they will say "wait wait what was that?" and I have to repeat it all. They will be talking on their own phone, saying huh to everything that is said.

After living next door to my neighbor kids for 7 years and putting up with them and talking to them and trying to teach them? Less appealing, FAR LESS appealing, when my brother and I were 12 we at least knew what the hell was going on, these kids got no clue whatsoever and I doubt these three are the only ones. We knew how to survive on our own, we knew how to cook by that time, this 12 year old can't even make a package of the Pillsbury tube of cookies because he can't read the instructions and he ain't got the common sense to let cookies out of the oven COOL DOWN before flipping them out with a spatula. What the hell?

I guess I would say less. This generation sucks.

I find they are a lot smarter than I was at the same ages. They are totally plugged in, but that is the parent's fault. They are only as plugged in to the cells, Internet, games as we allow. I limit my son, but I know other parents do not. But if I didn't limit him, he would text all the time.

This is a BAD question for me to be answering after the year I had. I find that kids today have a greater sense of entitled and far less respect than a generation ago. They're more likely to argue back, ignore you or be rude and many of them seem to think the world owes them something. I don't know how many times some brat would throw something on the floor and then when one of us adults asked them to pick it up, they'd give us a scornful look and tell us that's what the custodian was for.

I'm applauded at the lack of communication skills many kids have. I worked in a middle school this year and the way some of these kids wrote was truly scary - no capitalization, no punctuation, no sentence structure, and so on. I'm far from perfect, but the writing of some of these kids is what I'd have expected out of a 1st or 2nd grade, though I've seen primary kids produce far better work than some of these kids.

There are some truly wonderful kids out there and I don't want to knock them, but overall, I'm not that impressed with today's generation. Like Red said, though, it's about the parents, too - overindulgent parents who can't bare to see little Johnny upset in the slightest way.

TSJFan4Ever wrote:

This is a BAD question for me to be answering after the year I had. I find that kids today have a greater sense of entitled and far less respect than a generation ago. They're more likely to argue back, ignore you or be rude and many of them seem to think the world owes them something. I don't know how many times some brat would throw something on the floor and then when one of us adults asked them to pick it up, they'd give us a scornful look and tell us that's what the custodian was for.

I'm applauded at the lack of communication skills many kids have. I worked in a middle school this year and the way some of these kids wrote was truly scary - no capitalization, no punctuation, no sentence structure, and so on. I'm far from perfect, but the writing of some of these kids is what I'd have expected out of a 1st or 2nd grade, though I've seen primary kids produce far better work than some of these kids.

There are some truly wonderful kids out there and I don't want to knock them, but overall, I'm not that impressed with today's generation. Like Red said, though, it's about the parents, too - overindulgent parents who can't bare to see little Johnny upset in the slightest way.

Sounds like a neighbor we used to have. He never really had a prayer, his mom did drugs when she was pregnant, his uncle got him high when he was 3, and where she was concerned he just needed to play ALL day, he didn't want to sit down and work so he didn't need to. He's 1 1/2 years younger than me, and...what can I say? You know, I was always taught to have neat handwriting and I went over the grammar stuff all the time, he was in his teens and STILL couldn't bother capitalizing anything or dotting any i's or putting in any periods.

It's really sad, when he was 6 my mom started working with him after school because he was held back in kindergarten so he had that against him, and he had a rubber foam alphabet punch out board, and she would test him and call out random letters for him to point to, it took him forever and when she called out 'i' he pointed to his eye. And then she had me sit down at my desk with the board and she'd call out the letters and I got them right away but he had to look over the entire damn board to find any of them.

I don't think my mother had ever seen anything like it and I certainly didn't, I didn't understand how the kids who were going to the public school didn't know about half of the stuff my brother and I went through. When I was 10 I met another 10 year old girl who had no idea what the word 'deflate' meant, I was like ' didn't you ever have a basketball burst?'

You know, I get now, I didn't used to understand why I HATED school so much as a kid and these kids when they were the same age just loved it. I didn't get that, I get it now, we had to do actual WORK, we had to write long compositions and do long division and all that crap, and these kids are just being taught that school is all play, you don't have to learn anything. They are not being prepared ONE iota for the future, these kids have no idea how they would even read over their cable contract and know how they weren't getting cheated, and they don't care.

They can't write in cursive.

That makes me sad.

I had to laugh when one co-worker said that public school prepared you for real life. Didn't want to tell her the main reason I didn't want my kids going to public school was the lack of discipline and ANY for of consequences or accountable. This is the same co-worker who told me she never had a problem with kids, but was never supervising them during lunch or recess, just when they were having fun. Public school does NOTHING to prepare you for real life but it shows how she's bought into all that crap. Her daughter can sure flip on the attitude, too, and she's only 11! Thinks she's something special because she goes to the same school her Mom works at - supposedly means she can get away with what she wants and give attitude if she doesn't like something another adult says.

I wonder if the drugs left the neighbourkid brain damaged. Did they ever test him to find out if that was why he had such a hard time learning?

They said he had ADHD and he went to see a shrink and was put on ritalin, but I think the whole thing was a crock. His problem as a child was his mother never taught him how to work at anything, he always had to play, and nobody could ever correct him, he was the neighborhood terror and he knew he could get away with everything. And now he's 20 and no different, it took him a YEAR to find anybody to hire him because everybody knows what he's like and he's been fired from every job and it's stuff like dishwasher and WalMart, the stuff that you wonder HOW do you get fired from?

And when he was in school, he just refused to do any work, the teachers did all the work for him so he passed and then his mom gave him money to reward him for passing all his classes. He got held back twice, once in kindergarten and then in fourth grade and then they just passed him on every time. And this seems like a catch-22 because why reward somebody for not even trying? But at the same time, I have NEVER heard of being held back doing anybody even good, my own grandmother was held back back in the 1920s and she's still mad as hell about that.

Okay - when you described his learning problems, I thought thee might have been an actual disability but it sounds like it was entirely environmental. How sad that this Mom couldn't get it together enough to provide a decent home for her kid. There are times when being held back can be good. We had one kid in our class who was held back due to his immaturity and the sad thing is, he was still one of the two most immature kids in the class, even though eh was a year older than most of them. This is a kid who, at the age of 12, got his fingers caught in the door because he stuck them in the door as it was shutting - imagine the kind of thing a 2 year old would do. There was another kid would would also have done better had he been held back a year. Most times, it seems to be due to immaturity, rather than academics, 'cause there are usually ways to work around academics. I've onyl known a handful of kids who repeated a year and every time, it was because it was a combination of a really immature kid who wasn't a strong student.

The problem with passing them on, is these kids would have stood out even more and been ostracized even more, as the difference in maturity would have been that much greater. The one kid was really feeling it toward the end, as his classmates had matured and were ready for grade 7, while he was still acting like a pre-schooler. The kids were already starting to shun him because he was so childish.

TSJFan4Ever wrote:

This is a BAD question for me to be answering after the year I had. I find that kids today have a greater sense of entitled and far less respect than a generation ago. They're more likely to argue back, ignore you or be rude and many of them seem to think the world owes them something. I don't know how many times some brat would throw something on the floor and then when one of us adults asked them to pick it up, they'd give us a scornful look and tell us that's what the custodian was for.

I'm applauded at the lack of communication skills many kids have. I worked in a middle school this year and the way some of these kids wrote was truly scary - no capitalization, no punctuation, no sentence structure, and so on. I'm far from perfect, but the writing of some of these kids is what I'd have expected out of a 1st or 2nd grade, though I've seen primary kids produce far better work than some of these kids.

There are some truly wonderful kids out there and I don't want to knock them, but overall, I'm not that impressed with today's generation. Like Red said, though, it's about the parents, too - overindulgent parents who can't bare to see little Johnny upset in the slightest way.