Where have all the cowboys gone?

I work with kids (even though they are between the ages of 18 and 22), believe me they are still kids. I wonder on a daily basis what kind of standard their parents held them to. When today's youth leave the comforts of home to venture off to colleges and universities they are not ready to accept reality. They have very thin skin, and take everything personally. I wonder if we are locked into a generation of parents who feel that making life better for their children means spoiling them, so they do not understand what it means to "earn." "Earning" means working hard to deserve success, and I feel like kids expect success without work. They come here thinking success (or what they term success) is a right, instead of a privilege.

Where has John Wayne gone to? I remember being a young boy, and staying up late to watch John Wayne movies with my dad (I love John Wayne, and I am only 28 years old). I remember one very well, it is called, "The Cowboys." John Wayne's character takes a bunch of school aged boys on a cattle drive, because there is not enough men in town available to help. Anyways, as you can imagine, John Wayne is very tough on the boys throughout the drive. "Tough love" is the way I would describe it. But throughout his disciplining ways, you can tell he is trying to teach the boys how to become men. Towards the end of the movie, a group of outlaws, who are trying to steal the herd, kill John Wayne's character and take the herd for their own. The boys decide to give Wayne's character a proper burial, and take back the herd. They make this decision based out of respect for Wayne's character. Obviously, they take the herd back, and ride victoriously to their destination. But that is not really the point of the movie. The point is the relationship forged by the boys and Wayne's character. He was tough on them, but he respected them, and they felt that, even though they hated him at times during the movie. They were growing up, and Wayne's character held them to a high standard to make sure they would become good hard-working men.

This is exactly opposite of how I feel we are raising our children as a whole right now. If you discipline, come down hard, or even just speak the brutal truth (though it is the truth) today's youth take it personally. Then they run home to Mom and Dad, and tell them that their teacher or coach hates them. Then, instead of Mom and Dad searching for the truth and telling young "Jimmy" to buck up and find a way to positively deal with the situation, they go to the administration and try to get the person fired.

I receive kids when they are college aged young adults, and I feel like I spend most of my time trying to teach them how to grow up, how to thicken their skin a little, and how to honestly self evaluate themselves. I believe those are qualities their parents should have set in motion during the previous eighteen years. I don't feel like parents are doing this with intent to do damage to their children, but instead they are trying to improve the quality of life of their children from what theirs was. I think we all want to improve the quality of life for each new generation, but I think instead of helping them, we are actually handicapping them. Today's youth, overall, are not accountable.