Special Little Snowflakes

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While listening to “Morning Edition” on National Public Radio awhile ago, I heard a report about self-esteem in the workplace, and how Gen-Xers need constant praise for the simplest of accomplishments in order to feel appreciated.

Oh, my! The poor darlings are in the workforce now and now there are actually consulting firms that deal with how to keep the delicate little flowers happy, to retain them as workers, powered by constant praise, awards ceremonies and cookies and milk, I guess.

My first reaction was, “How idiotic. Just don’t hire the little turdblossoms in the first place, and the problem’s over.”

As usual, my first reaction is pretty useless. It seems that a great majority of gen-xers suffer from this self-esteem pathology, and if you aren’t going to hire gen-Xers, you are going to severely limit your pool of potential employees, some of whom may be genuinely talented for the job, despite their self-esteem problem.

So what do you do?

Damned if I know.

But pondering the dilemma did bring me to a less tangential issue for Math Mojo - that of self-esteem and education.

There are many school of thoughts on this. Schools today seem to take the expedient route of pandering to the basest wants of students as much as they can get away with. Bribes like “student of the week awards,” even up to cash awards, etc. We must make every child feel like a special, little snowflake, even when they are being little Smeagols. Very bad mojo.

Real respect and appreciation cannot be coerced by whining. In the long run, if a person lives long enough to attain a basic maturity level, they will see through the cowardice of their elders who pandered to them. Then they’ll have to go through a whole resentment stage, and, again, if they live long enough to reach the next maturity stage, they may find their own solutions for it and get over it.

Why put them through that unnecessary baloney? Why make external praise, or lack of it, such a big deal? Shouldn’t we teach that self-esteem comes from self? Isn’t that why we don’t call it “other-esteem”? If you condition a child to need his praise from you for every little thing, that is a control issue. It’s child-abuse, as far as I’m concerned.

Why is it that an entire generation seems to want to get their praise from external sources, for performance that is not necessarily praiseworthy? Did they design this phenomenon themselves? I don’t think so.

If the natural reaction to a child is to cry when it needs something, why would that make an adult feel the need to pander? Why doesn’t the adult do it’s best to actually fill the need, without having to feel guilty about the child’s natural needfullness? That unnatural, self-absorbed guilt is the motor for this whole problem. Then the guilt needs to be assuaged, and the pandering process begins. How did we learn to make ourselves feel so guilty?

The vicious cycle begins when the pandering does not solve the need. The kid didn’t need a toy, or a lollipop, s/he needed to be burped, get a hug, get fed, get diapers changed, or something else. No amount of what a child doesn’t need is going to satisfy the child. So now we have a crying, whining child who is spoiled, too.

And we are going to blame the child for this situation?

So what do we do about it? Once again, I don’t have a clue. OK, so maybe I do. First of all, if we observe children who we admire and consider well-balanced (this will be a different kind of child for different people, of course) we can model and learn from how their parents treated them.

Do you think the child who does well and feels good about himself was pandered to? Hell, most of the people I admire went through much rougher childhoods than my pampered, suburban butt. They weren’t pandered to by anyone.

Now, I’m not saying that you should make a child miserable - far from it. I’m saying that there should be balance. Try to protect them from negative extremes.

I do believe that what a generation watches effects their behavior to some extent. There have been so many studies about the effects of media with violent content on a child’s mind. You wouldn’t show Quentin Tarantino movies to a child (would you?). Maybe you shouldn’t show “Care Bears” or “Teletubbies” either. (And no, I am not referring to that sick paranoid homophobic freak’s theory about Tinky Winky allegedly being gay. You know who I mean if you ever read a tabloid.)

Of course everyone is special. Isn’t that nice? Now we can all join the “I’m Unique” club, just like everyone else.