Lessons learned from “OK Boomer” Protest
Gen Z — Baby Boomer conflict: How to settle it and change the opponent’s mentality
Parents teaching their children how to survive and exceed in life aim to make their adult life happier, better, and easier. But the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. This well-aimed process is a classic cause of the teenager-parent conflict. Today’s Gen Z and Baby Boomer’s coexistence in separate technological realities adds more fuel to it. When at least one of them doesn’t want to understand the other, the situation turns into a confrontation manifested today in a Gen Z viral protest “Ok, Boomer.” I have lived through such a conflict with my son and below is a lessons-learned story.
I am on my remote rotational hitch on a 14-day after arrival quarantine. Earlier today, I had a chat with my wife. I asked her a provocative question, what she would say if our 23 years old son declared he was gay and was bringing his partner home. I was surprised to hear her say, “Hi, guys, welcome home.”
We have lived in a very intolerant society all our life. To be normal equals in our place means to be aggressively homophobic, sexist, racist, xenophobic, biased, and hateful. Having traveled outside Russia more than our average compatriots, we probably were less xenophobic. The rest was us. But we haven’t suspected that until our son grew up and exposed the real “us.”
Racism
We didn’t think we were racists. Between my wife and me, there was nothing wrong to call our different race neighbors with dirty names. One day, our son asked why we used those racist words. My typical answer, “Because everyone called them that way,” didn’t work. He asked for facts and evidence to justify those nasty call names. Whatever “facts” I would give, “They are all thieves”, “Beggers,” were ruled out as the variation of the same irrelevant dirty names. He would immediately tap on the smartphone and read about local crimes. True, there were criminals of all races.
“Why do you call our neighbors so, dad?”
Why couldn’t my son understand me? It was so evident they deserved what we called them. What stopped me from outraging was his absolute Gen Z’s smiling tranquility. He didn’t care if he would win or lose. He laid out his thoughts with a smile on his face, plugged his earphones, and continued playing with his phone.
Every night I would turn and twist in bed perfecting my arguments for the next debate. But the son had never given me a chance. He hadn’t raised the issue again. He just dropped the seed for us to grow the plant with our own hands.
As we loved our son, we stopped using those bad names in front of him. As our son would always say “hello” to the neighbors, we also started. Later, we had some chats. The neighbor talked about his kids and I about ours. They turned out to be nice people. Several months or a year had passed and I noted that between my wife and me there was no longer hate speech towards other races. We stopped using racist words. We also made friends with our neighbors.
Homophobia
Around the same time, we instinctively used a curse word about gays in front of our son. His reaction was quick, “Why, dad?”
I already knew I had to provide evidence.
“It’s not normal,” I said and got another why.
“Because normal is a man and a woman!”
“Why, dad?”
“How can’t you understand, son, they cannot have babies!”
“Why, dad? Look, they have babies. Not exactly the way a woman has but they do have babies,” he smiled.
“Jesus Christ, son, they are evil, don’t you see?”
“Why evil, dad, what evil act did they commit? Did they murder, rape, or beat anyone?” His tranquility was killing me.
“Imagine what they do when they have sex, son!” I started raising my voice.
“Well, what about men and women, don’t they do the same, dad?”
“It’s different!!!”
“Why, dad, and how?”
“Why do they kiss each other in front of others”?
“Do they kiss in any different way than a girl and a boy would kiss’?
“Stop! Stop! Stop!,” I would lose my temper, “I don’t want to discuss it anymore. That’s absurd!”
We would stop using bad names to the LGBT community at home just because we loved our son. Again, I would be back to my sleepless nights working hard on my perfect argument. For weeks I would practice my eloquence. But our son looked as if we had never talked about the issue. He would not miss any LGTB parade to our dismay. To entice him into a discussion, I would give him a bait commenting on the parade or some TV shows, but he wouldn’t bite. He kept smiling and was friendly, loving us kid, as usual. But he had never raised the issue again.
I felt my arguments were not solid enough. I lacked facts.
The evil thing started failing first. One guy in the neighborhood raped his daughter and made away innocent. That was evil, and he wasn’t gay.
Slowly, month after month, my mentality was changing. One day, my wife, our son, and I were traveling by train from Munich to Garmisch Partenkirchen in Germany. Across the aisle, there were two guys. All the journey, they were loudly kissing each other. I didn’t like it. Then, I realized it wasn’t because they were gays. It was their too open affection in front of us what my puritan Baby Boomer in me couldn’t cope with. Hey, Gen Z, stop laughing. Yes, we are dinosaurs. I wonder, how ancient you will look for your kids.
Our mentality has changed. We were no longer homophobic.
He has also changed our mentality towards climate change, sexism, capitalism, social justice to Gen Z… We are challenging many of our assumptions now.
During every teenager-parent conflict, every party would like to pull the blanket to his/her side denying the existence of another opinion.
Our son delivered us a practical lesson on what I’ve been preaching and implementing at work. Management of change system widely used in prosperous businesses is a perfect approach to solving teenager-parent family conflict. And yes, young kids can initiate it.
What Our Son Did Right to Change Our Mentality
- He preferred discussion to debate.
Discussions are all about learning “…either about how the world works, or at least about the other person’s perspective,” while debates are all about the winner. When you discuss the idea, you deliver your view and evidence to support it. When you debate with your opponent, your talk is around him or her to inflict as bigger verbal damage as possible.
Productive communication must be I’m OK-You are OK. If you turn away from the subject, you will shoot or get the “Ok, Boomer.” Debating in a family conflict is always a lose-lose situation. You will never understand or change anybody’s mindset in a debate. (You can further read a fantastic life-changing and never aging book on communication by Eric Berne “Games People Play.”)
2. He was patient.
Sometimes it takes ages of hard, meticulous, consistent, one step at a time work to implement the change. Quite often you won’t get what you want. You just have to be ok with that.
Understanding that to change someone’s mentality might take very long is essential. When you know it, you just drop your idea and then wait, feed with facts and wait again, change artifacts like pictures on the wall and wait, add new cults like taking part in every LGBT parade and wait. You have to be consistent and as patient as if you were not expecting any result.
That’s what our son did. He questioned my assumptions by a simple “why” and forgot about it. He himself, his behavior, his “hellos” to neighbors, his Greta’s Friday protests were constant stimulations of our inner work. We launched the search for evidence to support our beliefs, but our minds bumped into numerous facts overriding them.
3. He knew we respected and loved him. And we knew he respected and loved us.
In his bestseller on management “The Leaders’ Handbook” (Scholtes, Peter R. The leader’s handbook: Making things happen, getting things done. McGraw Hill Professional, 1997) P.R.Scholtes writes: “People change because: …They join their respected peers in support of this new approach.”
When you respect and love someone, you will avoid inflicting wounds to your opponent. Our son simply laid out his views and stepped back. We learned what his assumptions were and didn’t assault on him with ours. We also took a step back. We both took a healthy pause. During that break, our old assumptions were stripped naked, exposed to rain, sun, and wind, and were gone shattered by a new reality conscious perception.
4. His position was strong.
What you are trying to defend or bring change to has to be supported by serious evidence and data. That’s an easy part for Gen Z. They know the internet-of-where-everything-is. Baby Boomers have to collect the same level of evidence to support their stance when preaching or defending their views. You have to be both a logical preacher and an honest ardent follower. It’s about your integrity: your beliefs, your words, and your deeds. If your viewpoint is supported by your words, emotions, or a holy reference only, you will turn a discussion into an “I’m OK-You are not OK” battle with wounded heroes but no medalists.
There is one lessons-learned takeaway from our kid’s well-done homework.
Every time we launch an attack on someone’s beliefs, behaviors, or assumptions, we need to think twice, no, thousands of times, before doing it. Because it might turn out our own mentality has to be changed first.