Being the first generation of Mother whereby the mainstream parenting aim is to accommodate, not train, is a big responsibility

“Kids these days!” Is usually a reference about behaviours.

And it’s usually a statement made (or thought) by people old enough to have been brought up in the behavioural era and to have brought their own children up in the behavioural era.

Pre 1990’s.

The nineties was the decade of the brain. (Largely because that’s when the USA went about bulk diagnosing people with psychiatric disorders, under the guise of a ‘chemical imbalance’ that there was a new tablet for). But also the 90’s was when neuroplasticity was ‘discovered’! And childhood, cultural and ancestral trauma was ‘discovered’! And neuroscience soon turned everything we thought we knew about behaviours upside down and led us to the unequivocal conclusion that ‘behaviourism does not a secure attachment make’.

“But I smacked/grounded/punished/insert word here my children and they turned out OK” is also a statement usually made by this same crowd.

And the thing is we really did turn out OK.

OK as in ‘coping pretty well for a gene…