It depends a lot on their environment.
I think in the right environment: encouraging and given freedom to explore but with guidance from parents, they are more confident and smarter these days.
But not everyone has the same chances if they grow up in poorer neighbourhoods with parents who also didn't get those chances and are fairly uneducated.
I could give the example of my own family to show how we got out of that environment but would take too long, and involved quite a bit of luck and individual effort.
My own children had things much easier although we didn't give them as much as others around us, and encouraged them to work while still at school at various things.
They are very different to each other though, and that's personality showing up.
Daughter is more confident than I was at her age and has a good job and now a family (started late), while son is still overseas and has done amazing things because he takes many more risks than the rest of us. The jury is still out on whether he'll be very rich or bankrupt by the time he's 50!! he deserves to be rich but no guarantees
So if you can manage to get out of a poor environment, it is possible to improve things for the next generation but it's obviously much harder.
I've seen parents ignoring their young children when they try to get their attention and carry on talking to friends or on their phones.
Or worse, yell at them and tell them to be quiet. How will they ever learn?
I talked to my children all the time and read them books. Book reading is another thing you have to encourage from an early age and then school becomes so much easier once they can read and are interested in the world. I'm now doing that with my grandchild and so is my daughter.
And later on encourage the right friendships, talk about drinking and drugs and crime.
I think parenting is getting harder and as teenagers they don't always listen, as their peers are more important to them.
I think in the right environment: encouraging and given freedom to explore but with guidance from parents, they are more confident and smarter these days.
But not everyone has the same chances if they grow up in poorer neighbourhoods with parents who also didn't get those chances and are fairly uneducated.
I could give the example of my own family to show how we got out of that environment but would take too long, and involved quite a bit of luck and individual effort.
My own children had things much easier although we didn't give them as much as others around us, and encouraged them to work while still at school at various things.
They are very different to each other though, and that's personality showing up.
Daughter is more confident than I was at her age and has a good job and now a family (started late), while son is still overseas and has done amazing things because he takes many more risks than the rest of us. The jury is still out on whether he'll be very rich or bankrupt by the time he's 50!! he deserves to be rich but no guarantees
So if you can manage to get out of a poor environment, it is possible to improve things for the next generation but it's obviously much harder.
I've seen parents ignoring their young children when they try to get their attention and carry on talking to friends or on their phones.
Or worse, yell at them and tell them to be quiet. How will they ever learn?
I talked to my children all the time and read them books. Book reading is another thing you have to encourage from an early age and then school becomes so much easier once they can read and are interested in the world. I'm now doing that with my grandchild and so is my daughter.
And later on encourage the right friendships, talk about drinking and drugs and crime.
I think parenting is getting harder and as teenagers they don't always listen, as their peers are more important to them.