Generation ‘Watch Me’

The Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Gen Z, and all the other labels for the generations to come. Which generation are you?  I’d like to take a moment to label the generation that my children are in. It’s called ‘Generation Watch Me.’ More specifically, it’s called ‘Generation watch every single thing I do every single minute of my life, please and thank you.’

Do you have a child in that generation too? Let’s talk.

Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, my parents were very present. They attended every softball game on Saturdays when I was a child, every volleyball game after school during the school year, and every choir concert I performed in on Sundays. However, there were tons (and I mean tons) of things that I did during the school day or even the school week that my parents did not attend. 

I clearly remember winning the poetry recitation contest in 1st grade and guess when my parents found out? They found out when I brought home my teeny-tiny trophy that day after school. I spent several days over my middle and high school years traveling to singing competitions and small group drama competitions where I would compete against other kids across my state in various categories. What would my parents do? They would go to work as normally scheduled and wait all day until our bus pulled into the parking lot that night to hear how I did.

School awards day? They’d find the perfect attendance certificate crumpled up in my backpack that afternoon. Field day at school? I’d tell them all about winning tug-of-war when I got home from school that day. Softball championship in a different state? I guess our coach would contact one adult and they’d enlist the telephone chain to get the news out to all the parents that we had won. Teen Valley Ranch Camp? My mother would write me letters. LETTERS! Generic letters that had no details about anything but simply letting me know she missed me and couldn’t wait to hear all about it.  We’d sit down days after I’d gotten home, and we’d look at the pictures that we had developed from my Kodak camera. The best part was always that I got to relive that whole week again with my mom as I told her the stories I remembered from the pictures.

My point in all of this is not to say that my parents were uninvolved or unattached.  I never once felt like they didn’t care. I never once felt I wasn’t important. I also never once felt as if what I did didn’t matter because they weren’t there watching me. Now, in raising my own children, I genuinely think that if I am not there watching every single thing that they do, that in their minds, somehow it doesn’t matter as much. That by me watching them, it gives value to what they are doing and there’s no purpose in doing it if I’m not there watching. Even when my kids are supposed to be playing by themselves, all I hear constantly is “Mom, watch this,” “Mom, did you see that?,” “Mom, you missed it!” and you can see the desire to continue with whatever they are doing start to diminish. Am I recording it? Am I taking pictures of it? WHY NOT? WHY AM I NOT WATCHING THEM EVERY SECOND OF EVERY ACTIVITY? 

Then, I remember what I tend to do before bed or when I get a quiet moment. I hop on my phone and watch videos of other people doing stuff. I give them value by clicking the “like” button or commenting, and therefore I give them purpose and a reason to continue doing what they are doing. I am reinforcing the exact behavior that I really don’t like seeing from my kids.

So, here’s where I try to inspire myself and others to do better.

I want my kids to do things because they love to do things. I want my kids to have intrinsic motivation. I want them to have a competitive drive even when there is one person in the stands and it’s no one that they know. I want my kids to be the best at their jobs when they are adults and not expect one single person to tell them they are doing a good job on a daily basis, but they keep doing the best they can anyways. All in all, I want them to live their lives to the fullest and quit expecting an audience. I don’t want them to expect me to attend every field trip because sometimes that just isn’t possible. I don’t want them to look around for me at their field day because field day isn’t about ME. It’s about them and their friends and their teachers and their FUN and they have to learn how to have fun without me around! I want them to go to the dang park and just play on the dang slide without waiting at the top until I’m LOOKING AT THEM.

Y’all, I LOVE MY KIDS more than anything and I know you do too, but we have to stop constantly providing them with external motivation and we have to stop accidentally reinforcing the fact that everything they do in life requires an audience. There are so many things in life that we do by ourselves with no audience but ourselves. When did we not become enough for our own selves? We are enough and we always will be enough. They are enough too, but they don’t know they’re enough yet and that, my friends, is our job.

I want my kids to go from “Watch what I can do!” to “You’ll never believe what I did today!” and I can’t wait to be the one to hear all about it.