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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Resilience
Independent
Kind
Healthy habits
Love of life, adventure[/quote]

These are good ones! Reading through all the posts  I think this most closely encapsulates what I want for my kids too.

As an older millennial who resents the stereotypes of my generation, I have to admit that the biggest character flaw I’ve seen play out amongst my mid-30s cohort over the last six months is a complete lack of resilience. So many parents just melting down and having a harder time adapting to life during a pandemic than their young kids. I see endless fatalist attitudes about how six and nine year olds will never catch up or recover from this “gap” in their education etc. etc. and I realize so many of us in the “everyone gets a trophy” generation have no coping skills. I think our kids are naturally resilient and it’s incumbent upon us to nurture that and teach them that adapting and overcoming is a part of life. All the other traits you mention really go hand in hand while leaving the door open for our kids to be who they want to be (ie dreamers or doers, makers or thinkers etc.)[/quote]

+1. I also think we weren’t raised to accept negative feelings as valid emotions.  We want the “bad” to go away now!  I try to let my kids sit with their sadness, anger, jealousy and accept those feelings when my parents worked to fix them.  [/quote]
And I’m the opposite and teach my children that [b]just because they feel something doesn’t mean it’s true[/b]. If nothing else, Covid has taught me that people have become utterly incapable of separating their feelings from fact. Our children would benefit enormously from adults who act on sound judgment and have a rudimentary knowledge of logic and rhetoric. The shift away from a classical education has impoverished a generation of parents who cannot separate hysteria from science anymore.[/quote]

DP, but the bolded suggests you're not separating feelings from thoughts.  No feeling is false, as feelings are truly defined (anger, sadness, happiness, etc.).  Those are different than the thoughts around those feelings, let alone the ability to apply logic.  I completely agree that many people's ability to think logically has been hijacked by negative affect (which is a thing), and that there are people who think that their feelings of anger, frustration, etc., justify certain actions on their part.  They don't.  But, if we don't listen to people's actual feelings and empathize with them *while also separating those feelings from thoughts and actions* we won't get anywhere.  If anything, it's our refusal to acknowledge negative feelings and dismiss them that have led to many of the problems we see today.  Feelings are not thoughts are not behaviors.  We can honor feelings without validating hurtful behaviors and illogical thoughts.[/quote]
I disagree, what we see today are the results of elevating feelings above reason for years, the apex of which is 2020. Children do not benefit from parents who cannot exercise restraint over their emotions, and acknowledge that some feelings are actually “bad“, i.e. not appropriate to the situation, not helpful and often actively harmful. Learning to take less seriously every whim that occasions the mind would be far more productive to spending years on the therapist‘s couch, wondering aloud how our parents failed is in elementary school. [/quote]

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