How To Become An Adult
by Miki Saxon
Sometimes people seem to forget that kids grow up and become adults.
Or they used to.
The responsibility for most of the problem can be laid at the feet of their parents and their helicopter approach to raising their offspring. Most ironically, they complain when job candidates sport the same attitudes as their own kids.
Other factors retarding adulthood include the escapism offered by today’s video games, especially for under-30 males, the lack of interpersonal skills driven by social media, along with social media’s unsubtle efforts to foster addiction in the name of profit.
And, of course, the largest factor being family and friends, whose emotional and financial support, enable a relatively comfortable living situation.
The difficulty today’s young adults are having in becoming actual adults was the impetus for (what else) a startup.
Rachel Weinstein, a psychotherapist, and Katie Brunelle, a former elementary school teacher and coach, responded by creating the Adulting School, a place for people to gain the skills they need to feel like an adult, from goal-setting and sheet-fitting to how to manage money or hang a picture.
Simon Senek, a British author and motivational speaker, also blames parents for the false expectations of so many Millennials, who never were given the chance to learn/live the process of achievement.
“Everything you want you can have instantaneously, except for job satisfaction and strength of relationships,” Senek argues. “There’s no app for that; they are slow, meandering, uncomfortable processes.”
Whatever you think about a school that teaches adults how to be adults the real question is: in what direction will the next generation go?
Image credit: the Adulting School
