When someone tells you that he or she was “Young and Stupid” what it is, is a statement claiming that they were foolish because he or she was young.
The reality is much different. Their parents did not teach them to be mature and that is why they were foolish.
A person who is not mentally prepared for life by good parenting does foolish things while young, especially as a teenager.
But because he or she experienced and feel that he or she chose the foolish things that he or she did, then they must be a fool, an idiot, and the blame for the foolish decisions must be their own, but it is not.
The worst case scenario is when the person does foolish things when young, realizes that they were foolish choices, and then does them for the rest of his or her life.
You hear people say, “I used to be so foolish when I was a teenager, getting wasted, parties, I really let my parents down.” The reality is that their parents let them down, not that they let their parents down. Because, if their parents had bought them up correctly then he or she would never have even considered the foolish things that they did as a teenager.
We self-blame when our parents let us down because the thought that our (Mothers Day and Fathers Day Myth) parents brought us up right and that because we turned out a mess that it must be our fault and not our parents, even though it was our parents who failed us, we never failed them.
Modern day parents put their children into survival Mode by not being there personally for their children,
• thus leaving the child to struggle to cope in life mentally unprepared
• or how to be their gender, or how to react,
• or how to control their own emotions,
• or how to be a parent.
• or how to deal with people and so on…
So when we do adult courses on health, clean living, parenting, mental illness, anger management, domestic abuse, and so on, it is not because we were tainted or flawed in any way (especially mentally), it is because our flawed parents did not teach us how to life, cope, react to life, avoid mistakes, avoid abuse, avoid drugs, warn us bout alcohol and the many dangers of life, they just let us unprepared go head first into disaster.
And then when we publicly look bad for our own family our parents cry in despair, “What did I do wrong with that boy!!!” – its not a question, its blaming the young adult for letting the parents down, because even the parents have no idea that they are to blame, and in reaction to the foolish behaviour of their young they simply blame-shift the blame to their young and they avoid responsibility.
Young adults don’t “magically” become foolish, they don’t know about the dangers to life, or what to expect as their gender, how to deal with the other sex, what sex is about and how to respect and honour sex, or how to respect and honour the opposite sex, or how to be a wife, husband, workers, or how to live, prepare for the future and so on.
They are not letting us adults down, the blame for the failures of the young (in mass) lies with us, we let them down and then we blame them.
All the best from James Martin Sandbrook. December, 2022.