Who are the generation Y? They are of the ones born in 1977-1994 and they are much more racially and ethnically diverse compared to people earlier than them. They are also an audience of the rapid expansion in the TV channels, radio and the Internet. Very flexible in fashion and style conscious can be used to describe them. It’s not surprising one out of nine people of this generation own a supplement credit card provided by their parents.
Generation Z have not been categorized much of yet but the environment they grow up in is a highly sophisticated one as technology improvements in media and computers result in a more internet savvy and expert generation compared to the former. This group of people consist those who are born in the years 1995-2012.
Both groups have similarities in which they grow up in a world with internet and where everything is readily available at their fingertips. It’s indeed a great challenge for parents of them especially those who have children of the Baby Boomers period.
Famously known to multi task, they can do many things like chatting on the phone, doing their homework and read books, all at the same time. As parents of them, you will need to train your children to focus on one task at a time. Multi tasking, although fast, has its disadvantages as the quality of work done is comparatively lower than the quality of work done should they be focusing on a single task.
Additionally, they are highly influenced by their self-entitlement sense whereby they ask many questions and think they are entitled to an explanation. Sometimes, should they go overboard and feel that you, as their parents owe them a living, then severe actions should be taken to control this problem. Try to negotiate with them reasonably and set an aim for them to achieve before rewarding them and make sure they understand that they should earn others’ respect and be humble.
Other characteristics include being impatient and expecting instant results. Every single thing in life must be instant, from instant noodles to instantaneous communication. They have zero tolerance of downtime and do not like their time to be wasted waiting. Their instant gratification will unlikely lead them to succeed in life and so they should learn to adopt delayed gratification. Parents can help develop this by making them wait for things they want through hard work before achieving and earning the reward.
As parents, beware that they are also have a false impression of the world and like to stay in their comfort zone where they see you as their safety net. Instead of becoming self-independent, they depend on their parents so much to the extent that they cannot take care of themselves. Thus, as parents, it’s important to ensure that your children do not depend too much.
It’s all about the balance of need and deserve. As parents of these two generations, it’s not a good idea to spoil them but be resilient as this can benefit both you and your children. You give them what they deserve without overdoing it.