From 1900 to 1964 discipline, motivation, achievement and comprehension among our kids increased every year. But 1964 was a sort of tipping point and since then crime, pregnancy, drug use and suicide all have increased together with divorce rates.

The antidote to this, needed to be an effective adult are, 3 perceptions and 4 skills according to the program ‘Developing Capable Young People’ (DCYP). The perceptions are:

• I am capable
• I contribute in a meaningful and significant way
• I have power or influence over my own life

The skills are

• Understanding your own feelings
• Communication skills - to interact/negotiate with others
• Ability to adapt and be functional in systems
• Judgment                                                                                                                                                         

DCYP is the brainchild of Alderian psychologist H. Stephen Glenn who died in 2004. But his vision is kept alive - by the likes of Judy Deiro, PhD, Director, Everett Site Human Services Program, Western Washington University, Woodring College of Education, Everett, in a recent lecture on Society’s Missing Infrastructure for supporting Healthy Adolescent Development.

Much of the deficiency of our young people is a lack of “apprenticeship for adulthood” notes Dr Deiro. When we lived together as extended families, in primarily rural setting, kids would talk to, and be taught life skills by, the adults. But after World War II men returning to the US tended not to want to go back to rural areas - I guess their horizons had been broadened by all that foreign travel - albeit to go and kill people.

Society changed from 73% living in small rural communities in 1940 to the early 1950’s when 97% of the US became urban or suburban - taking the kids away from grandparents who stayed down on the farm. Now the average family moves every 2 years - which of course also breaks any social interactions that kids might be forming.

There has been an increasing trend for both parents to work - and thus be away from the children.

Class sizes grew from 20 to about 50 students between 1940 and 1952  - so that instead of the teacher talking to the kids, about the only interaction possible was “sit down and shut up”.

Then, in the 1950’s what miraculous invention came along? Yes - the TV!

So even when the parents did get home from work, or the kids weren’t at a soccer game or band practice, all the family did was sit around the “boob tube” - so kids tended to know more about what was going on with The Brady Bunch or the Walton’s than about their own families notes Dr Deiro. And screen time for the average American is somewhere between 5 and 7 hours a day (how the hell does anyone have time to watch that much?).

Or when the little dears grow up a little and do get out, they get a job flipping burgers and all they get to talk to are the other airheads. No apprenticeship for adulthood there.

So we’re doing a great job screwing up our kids it seems, and re-arranging our society to make them emotionally inept and insecure.

My proposal would be to BAN ALL TV and make people TALK TO EACH OTHER.

OK, OK, unlikely to happen and way too fascist I guess. But it seems to me we do need to heed the warnings of H. Stephen Glenn and adopt the ideas of DCYP and communicate/educate.

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