Children these days seem to be mollycoddled

Even though Covid happened five years ago, its repercussions are apparent even today. When it happened, everyone had to stay at home. There was WFH (work from home) and home-schooling. Working from home was tough at first because people were so used to seeing colleagues face to face, attending meetings, going to lunch together and generally socialising. It was tough for children too.

They desperately wanted to go out and meet their friends in shopping malls or ride their bikes in the streets. But that being said, one thing they were quite happy about was not having to go to school. In their immature minds, that was one giant blessing. After all, which kids actually like going to school?!

Five years later, some of these restrictions have now become a habit with many people across the world. So many employees are reluctant to return to work at the office and would prefer to continue working from home despite the many distractions they have there.

I know one woman who works in HR and she would often work in the building’s public library for no reason other than the fact that she didn’t feel like going into the office; at home she said her cats disturbed her. In fact, many potential employees look for companies that have the option to allow their people to work from home and, if the company doesn’t, they often reject the job offer. The kids’ situation is actually worse when it comes to school.

Since Covid, reports across the United States say that there is now a growing trend across the country in which kids are not coming to school. The rate of absence is very high and the excuses range from being unwell to oversleeping.

I often feel that the children of today are from the ‘mollycoddled generation’. Everything in life is an issue for them and, by extension, for their parents. So much so that children are given special treatment by their parents who themselves did not when they were children. I have yet to see a child not being handed sweets or crisps just because he or she wanted it.

I have yet to see parents not give their child, even a baby, a phone to keep them occupied while they ate in a food court. I have yet to see parents not let their toddlers run riot in supermarkets disturbing other shoppers. This is now translating into schoolage children who are refusing to go because they overslept.

Why did they oversleep? Well they, and their parents, will tell you that the child was up doing his homework on his laptop. But that is not always true, is it? Yes the kid may have been up on his laptop but it’s human nature to be distracted from homework when you have a browser and access to YouTube or Computer Games. Therefore, it’s very likely that the kid stayed up playing games or watching videos and that’s probably why he or she overslept.

I think it’s shocking that some schools are now trying to incentivise school attendance by offering children money in return for attending classes! Another incentive put forward is adding attendance to the final grade! So a pupil’s grade would include not only how well he did in the exam but how often he actually came to class. What planet are we on? Children and parents should be grateful that they have an education system. That their child has the chance to be educated and, thus, make something of themselves. It almost feels like teachers ought to be grateful that children attend and not the other way round. This was never heard of around 50 years ago.

In England, for example, if a child was repeatedly absent from school, there’d be a knock on the door. A school inspector would come to the home and ask where the child is. The idea is to not only make sure he is safe but also to make sure he’s not playing truant. In those days, parents made sure that children went to school, unless they had something that was contagious. In those days, parents got into trouble for a child’s repeated absence.