Are You Using “Failed Parenting Strategies?”

Apparently I am, and so are you, if you parent millennials

“You’ve got to see this,” proclaimed one friend after another. Simon Sinek’s interview video with Inside Quest, an online talk show with a self-improvement/personal transformation theme, was hitting my Facebook feed at regular intervals during the holidays, and since the topic was “millennials,” I paused to take a look. I’m the mom of four kids born between 1995 and 2001 — definitely millennials by any definition — and I felt as well-equipped as anyone to engage in a dialogue about who they are and what they want.

What I saw amazed me. It was a diss on an entire generation of young people, based on generalities. What amazed me even more was the overwhelming agreement with Sinek’s message. And to take my amazement up a notch, many of the people who were cheering him on were parents of millennials, the very group that Sinek accuses of “failed parenting strategies.”

In this era of “fake news,” what to believe? People were sharing this video across social media, begging their friends to watch it, writing in the comments that they agree with Sinek’s assessment, and lamenting the poor character of this generation of young people. Meanwhile, as I watched the video, all I could think was, “Where are his facts?” And as a…