In response to the bell ringing that kids these days aren’t resilientthe way their parents were growing up in the Wild West of the seventies and eighties suburban American neighborhoods and schools: I call bullshit.
We weren’t that resilient.
Those of us growing up in the seventies and eighties were not tilling Victory gardens and whittling useful things out of sticks that we found on the ground. I know. I was there.
I can only speak to my own experience, and trigger warning, I’m not prone to nostalgia.
Yes, we played outside with the neighborhood kids until the streetlights came on.
It’s true we didn’t have iPhones. We weren’t texting or addicted to screens.
We didn’t expect our teachers to give us A’s.
We drank from the garden hose when we were thirsty.
And it got pretty Lord of the Flies out there in the neighborhood and schoolyards before the streetlights came on and no adults were watching. In fact, when the good adults weren’t watching, a lot of bad adults got away with some bullshit. Many in my generation would like you to believe we just rubbed dirt on the pain and got over it. Trauma doesn’t work that way, and no we didn’t.
[For more of this story, written by Maureen O'Leary, go to https://maureenolearyauthor.co...rent-that-resilient/]
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