*This article originally appeared in Living With Teenagers magazine

"I'm glad I'm not raising kids in this day and age." I'm sure my dad isn't the only grandparent who's uttered those words in recent years. "It seems like it's so much harder for kids these days," he's told me on several occasions. "So many pressures and choices on your kids. I don't envy you at all Walt."

 

He's right - this is a different world that our kids are growing up in. The choices, challenges, pressures and expectations they face are leaving a deep and lasting mark on who they are and who they will become. And to help them sort it all it out, they need parents who understand them and their world better than they understand it themselves. Today's children and teens are part of a truly unique generation.

 

What Parent's Need to Know About The Millennial Generation

• As children of the Baby-Boomers, the Millennial kids includes those born after 1980. They will become the largest generation ever.
• The Millennial kids are also known as "Remote Control Kids" (they face unprecedented and constant change), the "Salad Bowl Generation" (marked by racial, experiential, and attitudinal diversity), "The 14^th Generation (the 14^th generation born after the American Revolution), and "Bridgers" (bridging the millennia).
• They seem confident and comfortable because they've been born into a time of peace and economic prosperity. Consequently, they have been lulled into a false sense of security.
• They are the first generation raised in the new "postmodern" world with the accompanying postmodern world view. For them, feelings take precedence over reason, truth is relative, and everyone believes what's "right" for them. Consequently, they are feeling-driven, pluralistic, spontaneous, and without a transcendent moral compass.
• Family stability, support, and guidance are fading away as the majority of millennials grow up in families marked by divorce, fatherlessness, and/or brokenness. Fully 1/4 to 1/3 of the kids born between 1989 and 1994 were born to unmarried women. They have been left hungering for relationships.
• Without the support of loving and involved parents, many are being raised and nurtured on an expansive and growing media diet where options abound. Recent research indicates they are so media-savvy that they are able to process multiple streams of information concurrently!
• The pervasiveness of MTV and the Internet has shrunken their world. They are growing up in a global society and global youth culture where kids around the world increasing look, act, and think the same.
• Unprecedented economic opportunity and wealth leaves them vulnerable to marketers who are aggressively targeting them with advertising. As with previous generations, they are materialistic.
• They are deeply interested in spiritual things. While they are keenly aware of the spiritual void in their lives, they tend to avoid Christianity as an option while pursuing spiritual answers down a variety of strange and unusual avenues. Their "faith" is personal and syncretistic.