I got a call from my 24-year- old son.
“Hi Mom. How’s it going? Raining here in D.C.”
“Good, hun, and for you?” These greetings eased us into a real conversation.
He had recently moved to Washington, D.C., with his girlfriend in the hopes of finding a job and himself. I had just returned from visiting my 90-year-old mother and seeing his new digs. The fast pace of East Coast city life is a new world for my son after being raised in Boulder.
“This isn’t easy, Mom, the whole job thing.” That was an understatement, given the rate of unemployment for young men 18-24 is nearing 18 percent in recent surveys.
Although the rate of unemployment for college graduates reached its peak in 2010 at 9.2 percent, things are only slowly improving.
As we talked, he was careful not to generalize about the professional world but he had to admit his cohort seemed to be raised differently.
“Maybe this would be easier if you guys had put more pressure on me and pushed me more, like so many here.”
I have to admit I wasn’t exactly a “Tiger Mom,” demanding success at every turn, but he had recently graduated from an excellent school in the northwest and had done quite well academically.
So how do we prepare kids to succeed professionally in a competitive job market, no matter what coast they are on?
There is intensity about the East Coast, but the challenge universally is how we can raise the Millennial generation to have a healthy self-awareness but discourage them from being so egocentric that they lose sight of respect and generosity in a competitive world. What personal choices would benefit them emotionally, educationally, physically, and spiritually?
We didn’t want to encourage selfishness but instead a level of self-awareness that in the end would allow for greater contributions and the ability to genuinely give to others. Perhaps it is the hope to develop more of a “We” generation than a “Me” generation.
A strong component in building self-esteem is having the capacity to understand one’s emotional world. And it is an individual’s healthy self-esteem that will combat the inevitable rejections they will face in a struggling economy.
Often there is so much focus on academic, athletic, and social achievements that we forget the importance of emotional intelligence.
In D.C., I was fascinated by a two-story city Target where our carts sped up their own escalator to reach the second floor.
Unfortunately, there is no fast escalator to help with one’s professional climb. When my son asked if we could send the earbuds he left behind, it seemed fitting.
Encouraging our kids to listen to the self and have earbuds for the soul is an invaluable kind of pressure which prepares them for the inevitable challenges and triumphs in a fast-paced world.
Priscilla Dann-Courtney of Boulder (priscilla courtney3@gmail.com) is a clinical psychologist. She was on the 2007 Colorado Voices panel.
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