On Friday night, while I was trying to get a table at a local restaurant, Charlie watched a child — maybe three or four years old — screaming in the waiting area.
Demanding to leave. Expressing outrage for not being at home. Thoroughly upset.
The parents attempted to convince the child to stop screaming, then after a moment or two, they gave the kid a dollar bill.
The kid stopped screaming almost instantly.
At the table, as Charlie was describing this scene to me, he said. “Dude, this generation is cooked!”
By “generation,” he meant Generation Alpha, which he missed being a member of by a year. Generation Z ended in 2012 — the year Charlie was born — placing him on the cusp of Gen Z and Gen Alpha but firmly rejecting any notion that he is in the same generation as that child in the waiting area.
I’m not so sure. He’s pretty cuspy.
Either way, why does Charlie see the hazards of placating children with cash but not those parents?
He also often criticizes kids who are staring at phones and iPads at dinner tables, knowing how foolish it looks and how detrimental it is to a person’s ability to communicate like regular people. He hates hearing parents threaten their children with punishments that he knows will never happen. And he can’t stand watching kids misbehaving in public in front of parents who do nothing to respond.
Clara feels similarly, but she doesn’t see some of these things because her head is often in a book. She also tries to be more empathetic towards people.
Charlie has no patience for them.
And don’t get me wrong. The boy isn’t perfect by any means. He makes his share of mistakes, too. But he sees these bad decisions and wonders why parents can’t see the same.
He’s not wrong.
I explained to Charlie that not only is the kid with the dollar bill being set up for failure but his parents and future teachers are also being set up to suffer.
As my former principal was fond of saying to parents who were not actively engaged in their children’s learning and making excuses for their poor behavior:
“You pay now, or you pay later.”
I’d argue that paying later has a far steeper cost.
But who knows? Maybe that child is a future entrepreneur and will someday launch a company that will change the world in some positive way while employing thousands in the process. Maybe that wealth extraction from his parents was a first step to economic independence, long-term cash flow, and a well-capitalized enterprise.
I hope so.
I don’t think so.
