The American Myth of the Teen "Carefree Years"

We've heard it all before. The cliche that adolescence and high school are the "carefree years." The proponents of this myth could not be more wrong.

The teenage years are the most fraught with embarrassment, humiliation, angst, and misery. These are the years when anorexia, bulimia, bullying, drugs, underage drinking, acne, sexual confusion, etc, are everyday struggles for teens.

As a forty-something who has been having the time of his life since age 30, I can attest that the most carefree I have ever been is the present.

Perhaps married people look at their tortured lives and refer back to their single days as carefree years. If that's the case, I pity them.

In more wise societies, the teen years are seen as preparatory years where hard work and toil lead to lives of prosperity and wealth. All but the most savvy Americans believe that to be the case for their children, and we have a generation of poorly prepared "millennials" ruining workplaces the country over as proof.

So reject that myth. Impress upon your children that these are the days of hard work and delayed gratification. As much as my parents got on my nerves about this, I see now they were correct.

Children CANNOT Grow Up To Become Anything They Want!

We've all heard the cliche before. Parents instilling the belief in their kids that they can become anything in life that they want. Barack Obama's rise to the Presidency has renewed the life of this nonsense.

Out self-esteem child rearing ethos goes too far here. Kids grow up thinking that desire is all that is necessary to become what they want. No concept of toil, struggle, failure, perseverance, skill-development, etc. is ever talked about.

Each successful American in all endeavors has to work at their craft with obsessive dedication to become great at it. No matter how badly I might want to become a physician, I will not unless I completely rededicate myself to the field. In all likelihood, I would not attain status a a physician because my desire to do what it takes to become one is wholly different than my desire be one.

This realization is what we are denying our children. I hope our youth begin to understand that if they dedicate as much effort to academics and personal development as they to video games and social networking, they would be poised to accomplish incredible goals.

I fear that youth in the developing nations have a devastating advantage over our youth in that there is an urgency and a hunger that are lacking in American kids. I fear this is the old irony of prosperity wherein comfort creates complacency. This current generation of young people is the first to be less affluent and successful than their parents' generation. American would do well to reverse this trend; let's start with the lessons we are teaching our impressionable children.