Column: Stop calling them ‘snowflakes’ and ‘cupcakes’ and cut the kids some slack

It has been an especially rough time lately for kids, parents, teachers and pretty much anyone involved with our youth.

In the past few months, a promising young college student from Orange County was brutally slain; a Newport Beach high school student took his own life; and horrific school shootings nationwide have put us all on edge, even leading one local school to stay closed for a day as rumors of threatened violence circulated.

The image I have been unable to shake amid all these tragedies is that of a 15-year-old Florida student, Peter Wang, who knowingly put himself in harm’s way and died as he helped other students reach safety. His heroism takes my breath away, just as surely as it breaks my heart.

It also leads me to another takeaway, one that many might see as tangential at best, but which I believe is not only relevant but is long overdue.

I think it’s time we cut kids some slack.

The picture that we as a society have drawn of today’s youth is a cartoonish stereotype: Classrooms filled with petulant, entitled babies who can only be bothered to look up from their cell phones long enough to whine about their grades or threaten to have their mommies call. They don’t know how to screw in a light bulb, do their own laundry or make their own lunches.

Oh yes, kids these days expect everything to be handed to them on a silver, Internet-enabled tablet. They’re selfish, self-centered and serially disengaged.

This is what we keep hearing anyway. I would argue, however, that this picture is seriously skewed.

My first line of defense is to remind everyone that every generation, probably since time immemorial, believes that the generations that follow are terrible.

My parents, who were really nice people, considered my generation to be largely populated by wastrels with ratty, uncombed hair and questionable personal hygiene. Our music was noise and our morals were lacking.

We were ungrateful for the sacrifices of past generations and disrespectful of our elders. And we thought the world revolved around us and our pursuit of instant gratification.

Sound familiar?

Except now we keep hearing that this time it’s different. Kids today are worse than ever, we are often told. They are brattier, more entitled and less emotionally equipped to handle the demands of the real world.

To be sure, as with every stereotype, there are probably nuggets of truth to be found in this caricature of our youth.

We certainly do have problems balancing the use of personal technology, and we need to find ways to help our children avoid the loneliness, alienation and anxiety that often results from overuse of social media.

And no doubt some parents are too permissive and too concerned with keeping their kids happy, at the cost of their children’s development of adequate coping skills. Many of us tend to focus our kids on building their resumes, but might overlook the nurturing of their character.

And yes, every generation is shaped in large measure by the political, cultural, economic and technological forces prevalent at the time, and that means that there will always be marked differences among age groups.

Nevertheless, I think we need to take it with a grain of salt every time we hear a breathless warning from some “expert” about a crisis in parenting and the ruination of today’s youth.

Maybe, just maybe, the kids today aren’t quite as bad as we make them out to be. Maybe we’re projecting the behavior of a minority onto an entire generation, while we discount much of the evidence for optimism about today’s youth — such as the largely unheralded news that the teen pregnancy rate is at a record low, the use of alcohol and tobacco by youth continues to fall, and volunteerism is on the rise.

Perhaps many more of them than we realize are also socially aware, politically engaged and deeply thoughtful about the future. Maybe they’re better people than we give them credit for — despite all the efforts of hapless parents to coddle and corrupt them.

Indeed, I have often noticed when reading articles about today’s youth that there is usually a long laundry list of worrisome trends and negative attributes. Then, if the reader is patient enough to make it through all the bad stuff, at the very end there is typically a brief mention of the positive signs, such as that kids are actually now less narcissistic and are prepared to work hard; and that they are more inclusive and are highly concerned about social justice.

So again I say, it might be time to cut the kids some slack. We can recognize the failures and challenges of each generation, but let’s do so in a less disparaging, mean-spirited, defeatist way. No more talk of “snowflakes” and “cupcakes.”

Not all kids today are selfish entitled brats, and as evidence I offer up Peter Wang, who literally took a bullet for his classmates. Let this selfless young man be held up as a shining symbol of the best of humanity, and a beacon of hope for a future that will soon reside in the hands of his generation.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.