So they "grow-up" (sort-of) with no coping skills. No way to handle a loss, no "tough love" from parents, coaches, teachers. Nope, the little ones are coddled from the get go. So all of a sudden, when they get a hard "no" that isn't going to change, isn't going to go their way, they have no frame of reference, no tools, no experience, nada. It is not hard to see how some could spin off into thinking this is the end of their world, or at least a life changing event...
My generation got told no. We got told we lost. We got told we had to do better. You know what? We learned to deal with it. We learned to move on, or to practice more/harder and improve. We learned it's not the end of the world. Kids these days don't hear that, don't get that. So yeah, a small percentage of them get to a point where they snap - because they haven't learned all the small lessons along the way.
When I was a teenager, we had ready access to firearms. There were rifle marksmanship classes in school. There were deer hunting rifles in trucks in the parking lot. We got embarrassed in school. We got rejected at dances, or for dates. We got broken up with. We got dinged for a couple of beers under age. We got disciplined by parents, teachers, coaches, and local police. We coped, we moved on. We didn't come back and shoot up the school, or a movie theater.
When we deny our kids the experiences to build on to deal with these kinds of situations, is it any wonder they cannot handle them when they occur? Because disappointment and rejection are going to happen. Sure, not every kid that gets rejected snaps, but some apparently do to one extent or another. We're not protecting our kids by coddling them, we're doing grave damage to them. "Safe spaces" are anything but - they are the exact opposite of the real world. The real world isn't a safe space, kids better know how to handle themselves or it is going to be very bad for them, and occasionally very bad for the rest of us.
Good post! All true.
It also explains why kids seem to like awful movies where the hero cannot lose much nowadays as well.
There is a lot of truth in what you say.
I was a latch key kid from age 5.
She walked me to school the first day of kindergarten, told me to watch the traffic and left detailed notes for putting the dinner on when I got home.
Growing up early aint a bad thing