What our kids can teach us

Farrah Storr believes we can learn a thing or two from millennials

If you’ve heard the term millennial and not been sure what it means, just look around you. They’re everywhere! If you’ve had kids in the past three decades, you may live with one or more. You may work with some.

Millennials are the largest generation in the world (encompassing anyone who was born between 1981 and 1996). They grew up with mobile phones, Youtube and one of the biggest financial disasters of the last century. As such, millennials have turned out very different to you and me.

Those differences, however, are important to understand, not just because there’s a lot of great stuff we can take away from them – such as their entrepreneurial spirit, fearless advancement into the unknown and winning ability to market themselves like a shiny new Apple product – but also because they need our help. This is because the other name for millennials is ‘Generation Snowflake’.

They are more anxiety-ridden and fragile than any other generation, so we need to support them. We need to build a generation of snowdrops, not snowflakes – an army of young men and women who raise their heads when the environment is tough and cold, instead of cowering and crumpling. So, here’s what they can do for you and, more crucially, what you can do for them…

The millennial generation are those in their 20s and early 30s