Excuse Me While I Sound Like A Crotchety Old Geezer For A Minute Here

Excuse me while I sound like a crotchety old geezer for a minute here

I've seen this attitude pushed more on social media that "kids and especially teenagers are naturally defiant and naturally want to upset and piss off adults and parents and teachers need to just accept this and deal with it" and tbh, I don't agree. I don't remember wanting to piss off or upset anyone on purpose for fun as a kid or teenager.

What I do remember is that when I was getting a budding sense of morality and justice I would stand up to misogyny / racism / homophobia or general cruelty from adults and/or peers and it would usually be dismissed as "oh she's just at an age where she wants to be rebellious for the sake of it, she just wants to defy adults for fun because she's at that age" and that logic was used to dismiss it.

Likewise the same logic was being applied to kids, I'm talking especially privilged kids like the white kids and the boys especially the cishet boys, with budding cruelty that was a result of unchecked privilege. Like boys being grossly misogynistic and homophobic, "oh he just wants to be rebellious and piss off adults, it's fine". Do you see the issue of brushing the behavior of marginalized kids who are developing a sense of justice with the same stroke of privileged kids being cruel and bigoted? Oh that they're both just being rebellious and trying to get a rise out of you and it's fine just ignore it don't try to actually address it or do anything about it?

I think kids and especially teens usually have more complicated reasons being their behavior than "oh it's hard wired into their biology that they just HAVE to be defiant for the sake of it at that age" and using that logic prevents adults from actually having to think about and address the root of their behavior.

It also lets adults off the hook from actually having to do something about dangerous behaviors kids and especially teens do, like binge drinking until they have to be hospitalized. "Yeah it's just normal and natural because they have to be rebellious and make stupid decisions at that age, it's just hard wired into their brains that they gotta" is just fucking lazy. When I was at that age I understood drinking until I blacked out and needed to be taken to the hospital was bad and should be avoided because adults in my life had taken the time to explain to me it was bad. I was actually capable of rationalizing "hmm, alcoholism and alcohol poisoning are bad and I should avoid those things" and being warned against it did not tempt me to go out and drink dangerous amounts. Why the fuck would it? That makes no god damn sense and is just a lazy excuse not to actually teach kids better in a way they can understand.

Also I mean sure, part of it is laziness, but I also think some adults are so scared of looking like the buzzkill killjoy to young people because they're afraid of aging and actually having to look like a grownup. A lot of this is our culture's worship of youth and demonization of aging, so a lot of people are really scared of looking "out of touch" from the youth and really want to look like the cool hip understanding adult.

But also part of this is privileged adults wanting to protect the behavior of privileged kids. Just rebranded "boys will be boys" if you will. Of course an adult man is going to say "oh come on he's just a teen, teens are gonna be stupid and want to break the rules" about a teenage boy behaving in a reckless and cruel way. Of course white adults are going to say this about white kids behaving in a reckless and cruel way. They got away with it when they were teens so of course they want the same for today's youth who share their privilege.

Anyway it's time to stop being lazy caregivers. Kids aren't a bunch of stupid animals that just have something hard wired into their brains telling them to break rules and be defiant with no deeper motivation to their behavior than some "rebellious defiant" hormone in their brain mindlessly controlling them. It's degrading to oversimplify their behavior like that, they are human beings after all. There are almost always going to be deeper reasons for their behavior, most often that they're an underprivileged kid with budding morality and justice, or that they have a privileged background that has resulted in their more reckless and cruel behavior going unchecked. If you're someone who is a guardian or caretaker over kids and teens you do actually have a responsibility to exam the deeper reasons behind their behavior and address it instead of just dismissing it at "oh well it's just their weird hormonal teen brains commanding them to break rules and be rebellious without any deeper reasoning, time to just ignore it and not take it seriously"