A Childhood Bereft of Raw Experiences
How Constantly Configuring and Directing Children's Experiences Results in Anxiety, Depression & Existential Confusion
Our children need and deserve, raw, un-configured, self-initiated experiences, absent adult psychological agendas, socialization agendas, learning agendas, or health agendas. As an advocate for children and young adults I am disturbed by the many ways in which younger generations are blamed for responding to a world into which they were born, a world they had no hand in creating.
There are plenty of people who comment on the attention spans of younger generations and hint at the connection to cell phones and video games. True, the correlation shows up in scientific studies. There are plenty of people who note that lack of accountability, the lack of consequences from generations of parents who, in response to past discipline that was too angry or violent, went to the other extreme and failed to discipline at all. In the big picture, there are many of us who realize that we have created a world in which children and young people are confronted by bewildering complexity, few if any reliable moral truths, constant political bickering and name calling, an overwhelming glut of instant information and content, without any guidance or perspective – all of this is true. In addition to these factors, in the past 50 years, we have normalized a toxic amount of sugar and stimulants, a lack of sleep due to electric light, cell phones, and content available on cell phones. We have normalized a constant growth model, implying that if you have not “succeeded” you aren’t working hard enough or long enough. All of this results in high anxiety, constant second guessing of “the right” choices, feeling ungrounded, moral confusion, and depression. These are struggles that I witness commonly amongst our young people.
Many of these challenges will be worked out as we adjust to new technology and begin to connect our habits to our healthy and unhealthy outcomes. The human race, for all its failings, tends to figure things out over time. However, when we can identify a concrete challenge, within our ability to effect change, it behooves us to acknowledge the challenge and begin making changes. I believe one of the greatest contributors to the above noted psychological struggles, anxiety, depression, confusion, is the lack of raw experiences. I believe a lack of raw, self-initiated experiences has a profound effect on young people’s motivation, impulse control, sense of grounding and direction, on their ability to decide, choose, create their own life and direction. I enjoy focusing on this one area because it can trump all the others if we are vigilant as the caretakers of our children and our young adults’ environment and experiences. We also have the ability to make space for these experiences to occur - raw, un-configured, self-initiated experiences.
I currently live in a privileged community where I see lots of care for children and plenty of parental attention. Yet, there is something that bothers me about the habits I see. For a while I could not put my finger on it. And lest I unfairly single out a particular community, once I identified the problem, I saw that it pervaded almost every suburban and urban community. I saw fathers throwing a baseball with kids in the park, mothers helping a child share a toy. I saw coaches running drills with young kids on the basketball court. While observing an elementary school recess as a data collector, I saw a whole recess with assigned stations, each managed by a TA or teacher ensuring everyone line up, do the exact “play” task and then wait a turn. Raising my own child, looking for things to do, you realize that there are a plethora of gyms, activities, music classes, etc., often for a formidable price and with a whole psychological, sociological agenda, cooked up by some very smart educators, therapists and caregivers. What’s not to like?
What finally bubbled to the surface, what really bothered me is that kids raised in these environments are attended to, taught, parented and cared for, but they rarely or never experience what it is like to be bored, to wonder, to wander, to create and initiate their own activities. Their whole day, moment to moment, including recess and “play time” is pre-configured, has an adult-conceived agenda, of health, socialization, skill building, ethical development. There is not one moment for them to wonder, to think on their own. Even between activities, if they become bored or restless, there is always an i-pad, a cell phone, or a program. They don’t go down to the local stream and splash about for hours, they go to a swimming class and learn to kick. They don’t climb a tree for the fun of it or build a tree house, they take a “nature walk” and learn about flora and fauna from the local park ranger. They don’t invent a new variation of tag or kick the can, they don’t argue about rules because they invented them and are having a power struggle with the older child who isn’t being fair, they must refer to an adult and learn “conflict resolution”. They don’t invent a story or make up a play, they participate in their local kids’ theater where they are “taught” the ins and outs of theater and the “proper” ways of interacting. They don’t imagine anything unless part of a writing assignment in response to “story time” a book reading by an adult who decides what it means, how they should respond to it and then walks amongst them making encouraging comments. They don’t have adults present as a loving attention, as a way of internalizing love, safety and secure attachment. They have adults configuring every bit of their experience and imposing meaning on that experience, whether intended or not.
Here is the connection that I infer. I see a certain number of teens and young adults of high IQ, who have internalized an amount and complexity of information that would have been unimaginable when I was their age. They often have access to money, enough of it to not really worry, and opportunity as well. I also see high levels of anxiety, confusion, aimlessness, compulsive solutions to anxiety, sexual “freedom” combined with romantic confusion and very little ability to imagine or intend their own lives. When you ask the generic, “what are you going to do with your life?” question, they have very well-spoken answers, full of information, and mature thought about whether it is economically feasible, environmentally responsible, socially conscious. They seem to believe that the only way forward is to choose a preset path amongst a bewildering number of options, all of them fraught with moral pitfalls for which they believe they are responsible (this is an entire article unto itself).
With differing socio-economic classes, you might see the absence of opportunity and lack of access to money but you see the same anxieties, often expressed by bouncing back and forth between a bewildering number of possible outcomes, lacking the instinct to create something to which they feel connected, and then to find where in the world there might be space for them to create something of their own. We have not taught young people that they have access to possibility, we have taught them that there are no possibilities, only choices. There is no creation, only choosing what was already created. In fact, there seems to be a deep distrust of anyone who creates and succeeds at it. There seems to be an over-riding sentiment that creating anything that doesn’t follow incredibly strict rules of environmental awareness, socio-political awareness, gender, age, race, religious awareness, serving all parts of society, costing nothing, taking up no space – then that is a selfish, immoral endeavor.
To simplify my argument, I see young people who are terrified of taking up space. I see young people who have almost no natural visceral sense of entitlement to their own biological presence, to the fact that they live and breathe. They are afraid to push against the world and no matter how intelligent, no matter how well “informed”, the space where their natural instincts might lie, where their comfort with self might lie, where their imagining of themselves as a human animal inhabiting the earth might lie, that space is filled with anxiety, jittering between infinite, but predefined choices, fear of acting without being told when, how and why to act. They have been taught to take responsibility, to feel responsible, but the truth is, every response has already been pre-configured for them, social, moral, and ethical, meaning already applied. They have been told, what the thing is, how it works, what should be done with it and the many many ways in which it could go wrong. They do not get the joy of creating a new thing, but they suffer the pressure of screwing it up. Please let me repeat this because I think it is foundational to a lot of teen and young adult anxiety today. They do not get the joy of creating a new thing, but they suffer the pressure of screwing it up. They have been taught that as the older generation remade the world according to their imagination and purpose, this was a racist, destructive, selfish act. They have been taught, that to act, to create, to generate is an inherently immoral and destructive act. This may be anecdotal, I may be wrong, but this seems to be a pervasive type of fear amongst teens and young adults.
I don’t believe we can control the exponential explosion of technology. I don’t believe we should. I’m fairly optimistic that we will invent our way to better versions, to better relationships to our ever speedier, ever more present content carriers. I don’t believe we can roll back to simpler times. They were simpler because we lacked knowledge of how we were damaging the environment, we lacked awareness of how our unconscious biases hurt those of different races, etc. I’m not suggesting that we re-create some idealized past. I’m suggesting that as we move forward and evolve into a better relationship with the complexity, the rapid change, the glut of readily available content, that one way in which we can improve our children’s lives and futures, one thing we can control, is being sure to place our children in environments and situations where they can have raw, self-initiated experiences.
I am suggesting that without a deep, instinctive connection to a sense of self and the right to exist, to imagine, to question, to wonder, to create, our younger generations will be amazing followers, wonderful cogs, generations of anxious, easily manipulated workers who never even imagined that what came before them could or should be allowed to fall away.
Jon. I share the concern.
This came up recently when we took in our three grand-children. We live in a safe condo complex. However, when the oldest, 9, asked if she could go two building over to see if her friend was home, I said, "Yes." When her mother and my partner found out, their reaction was, to me, comical... but not so much.
I explained that she was smart and walking along a side-walk, probably less than 100 yards, crossing no streets or alleys, was safe. I said she needs to feel some autonomy.
A couple days ago I was at the store and a teen was having an obvious disagreement with her mother. She was not disrespectful but persistent and her mother was good-natured but equally persistent in answering "No" to whatever it was her daughter was asking about.
When the mother saw me taking notice of the conversation, I said, to her daughter, "Use the, 'If you loved me you'd say yes.'"
They both laughed but then the mom said, "She wants to go to Magic Mountain alone." Her daughter chimed in, "No alone. With my friends."
I asked mom, "Is your daughter intelligent?" Mom nodded and responded, "Yes."
"Does she get into trouble?" Mom said, "No.. she's very good."
"Are her friends solid." Mom said, "Yes."
I said, "I'd let her go."
The daughter was, of course, thrilled. I added, "At least tell her you will consider it and really consider it. The environment is fairly controlled, she's with a group of good friends, and you can have her check-in via phone from time to time. I understand the concern but consider whether your fear aligns with what is truly likely to happen at Magic Mountain."
I explained that I had two daughters - four children - and I do understand the concern but that independent experiences and the adventures they have apart from us are magical and important. I believe it is our role, as parents, to find the safest ways to let them experience those.
Later, while in line, I saw the mom again and apologized for over-stepping my bounds. She thanked me and said was considering what I said.
Anyway... sorry for the novella. Good to see you on Substack.