Yesterday, I launched a two-part blog series on how leading kids has changed through history. I shared what’s changed and why I think we’ve shifted. It seems we, adults, really want the approval of our young people and we just won’t sacrifice their temporary happiness for anything—including preparing them to be disciplined adults themselves. It’s all about current happiness and pleasure not future fulfillment and wholeness. [caption id="attachment_5887" align="aligncenter" width="570"] photo credit: ~PhotograTree~ via photopin cc[/caption] This is not how it’s always been, nor how it is in some cultures today. A few years ago, Izquierdo and Ochs wrote an article for Ethos, the journal of the Society of Psychological Anthropology. They posed cultural questions like: Why do Matsigenka children “help their families at home more than L.A. children?” And “Why do L.A. adult family members help their children at home more than do Matsigenka?” With the exception of the imperial offspring of the Ming dynasty, contemporary kids in the U.S. may represent the most indulged young people in the history of the world. Writer Elizabeth Kolbert notes, “It’s not just that they’ve been given unprecedented amounts of stuff—clothes, toys, cameras, skis, computers, televisions, cell phones, PlayStations, iPods. (The market for Burberry Baby and other forms of kiddie “couture” has reportedly been growing by ten percent a year.) They’ve also been granted unprecedented authority." “Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval,” Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, both professors of psychology, have written. In many middle-class families, children have one, two, sometimes three adults at their beck and call. This is a social experiment on a grand scale, and a growing number of adults fear that it isn’t working out so well. According to one poll, commissioned by TIME and CNN, "two-thirds of American parents think that their children are spoiled.” But who’s really to blame?  Hmmm. We can’t just say it’s the kids.

Child rearing. Education. Mentoring. It’s all changed in our lifetime, and especially when compared to cultures in history. How did parents in different cultures train young people to assume adult responsibilities? When you examine past cultures in America, Europe and Asia, you find a handful of common markers that describe how adults led kids:

1. They led by principles – Guiding maxims or beliefs determined their leadership.
2. They based their leadership on the belief there was right and wrong behavior.
3. They felt that discipline was the first trait a child must learn.
4. They built a desire in youth to interact with adults and to become adults.
5. Their greatest hope was that children become adults who contribute to society.

Today, this is just plain rare. The New Yorker reports that in a recent study of families in L.A., no child routinely performed household chores without being coerced. Many of the kids had to be begged to attempt the simplest tasks; often, they still refused. In one fairly typical encounter, a father asked his eight-year-old son five times to please go take a bath or a shower. After the fifth plea went unheeded, the father picked the boy up and carried him into the bathroom. A few minutes later, the kid, still unwashed, wandered into another room to play a video game.

Years ago, we began reading widely accepted research that girls were experiencing puberty at an earlier age than in the past. Now—we’re discovering the boys are facing their own challenges. Males in the U.S. are starting puberty six months to two years earlier than we did when I was a kid. Back in my day, puberty began at around 12 years old. Today, it’s now 10, according to the 2012 American Academy of Pediatrics. You say—so what? [caption id="attachment_5872" align="aligncenter" width="570"] photo credit: HAMED MASOUMI via photopin cc[/caption] Significant challenges accompany this reality. First, this research unveils that boys who begin puberty at about 10 years old, instead of 12 or 13, desire sexual activity sooner than their emotions know how to handle it. Their body screams at them to do something they are not ready to be responsible for emotionally, intellectually, socially or spiritually. Like a ten year old who wants to drive a car—they yearn for something they are just not ready to handle. For instance, they’re big enough to cause physical damage to people or property but are emotionally behind in curbing that appetite to do so. The bottom line? Their emotional maturity is not keeping pace with their physical maturity. In other words, they’re advanced in some categories of their maturation, but delayed in others. This causes parents, teachers, coaches and youth workers to struggle in how to teach and equip them. In some ways—they’re so ready for what’s ahead. In others, they are so behind. At times, we must treat them like adults; at other times, like little children. So what can we do?