Treat adults like children and that is the way they will behave

Iwant to stamp and shout and find someone to blame, but that would be childish. Not that anyone would notice. Being childish is on trend (note my grasp of the lingo).

How is it that in the space of about a generation, the tendency for adults to be treated like children has blossomed, setting the seed for matching childish behaviour by those we would once have assumed to be grown up?

It makes me feel positively curmudgeonly, but at 17 I was working as a reporter, having lived away from my family since I was 12. I was in a small hostel with other young working women. We cooked our own meals, made our beds, did our own laundry and were subject to minimal supervision.

We were not angels. There was cigarette smoking, under age drinking, some reckless sexual encounters (sometimes resulting in unplanned pregnancies), and involvement with guys who had yet to get the no drinking and driving message.

If we made mistakes, we had to suffer the consequences. (The closest I got to the long arm of the law was being warned about being in a pub under the age of 20.)

Contrast that with being a flatting University of Otago student today.

While you might be old enough to vote, borrow money, join the Defence Force, marry, and buy alcohol, somehow you are considered so incapable of selfcontrol and the ability to behave properly, you must be watched by an increasing number of CCTV cameras, Campus Watch personnel and the university proctor.

Until his behaviour was exposed, the proctor apparently felt it was OK to enter a student flat and confiscate bongs used for smoking cannabis. His justification seemed to be that he was acting in loco parentis.

But these students are not primary school pupils. They are adults who have been set free from the family home. Alongside academic studies, they are learning how to live without the mummy and daddy helicopter. As a parent, I certainly wasn’t expecting the proctor to be running around after my flatting sons, saving them from possible prosecution for cannabis use or any other foolish behaviour.

Is there a risk that the more babyishly we treat young people, the more infantile and less selfreliant they become?

Is social media, with its enthusiasm for the ubiquitous selfie and the petulant and impulsive outburst, aiding and abetting this propensity for immaturity in young and old?

It may be a great place to find support if you feel alienated, but is that helpful if all it is doing is echoing your cries on the baby monitor?

Infantile online bullying behaviour often goes unchecked, perhaps leading some to believe this is acceptable.

Mainstream media plays a part in this too, reporting the huffing and puffing of the online offenderati with a reverence never accorded to the oldfashioned equivalent, callers to talkback radio. It’s lazy journalism and more likely to be inflammatory than elucidating.

The University of Otago is not alone in babying its students. Massey University’s vice chancellor Jan Thomas told us security concerns were behind the decision not to allow Don Brash to speak on campus when her worries were really about his tedious message.

It is hard to see why students would be incapable of deciding for themselves whether his oft expressed views were worthwhile, unless ,of course, Jan sees her charges as being too little to make such judgements.

Perhaps it would be better if she had said Don was like a bad tooth fairy who, instead of exchanging their teeth for money, would just take them and implant racist ideas in their tooth sockets.

Don’t expect inspiration from the supposed cream of our elected representatives, either.

What example is set when we discover a government minister is likely, on the balance of probabilities, to have abused and bruised her press secretary, ostensibly because the minister missed out on a photo opportunity with the PM?

Good grief. What next? A lynch mob if the minister were overlooked for a television interview? Yes, she has been demoted, but is her behaviour tolerable in any MP?

I wish I knew how to stop babyish behaviour; that I could confidently say people will behave the way we expect them to, so we should just lift our expectations. Sadly, my parenting experience did not always bear that out. ( One of my children, who had behaved perfectly during weekly trips to the supermarket for years, suddenly decided to become that brat clamouring for a treat at the checkout.

It did not work, so we were flabbergasted when he repeated the performance the next week).

The thing is, mummy and daddy don’t have all the answers. Sometimes, you have to be trusted to work things out for yourself.