The ‘Real World’ Doesn’t Exist
This place adults keep telling children they need to prepare for is fictional
“They’ll need these skills out in the real world,” they say, usually when trying to coerce a kid into doing something they don’t want to do.
Really? The skill of letting people strong-arm you?
The skill of doing what you’re told without question, regardless of whether it feels right?
The skill of having someone looking over your shoulder, micro-managing you throughout your day?
What bizarro world do these people live in?
“In the real world our actions have consequences,” they say.
Yes.
Abuse has consequences.
Trauma has consequences.
Disability has consequences.
Mistreatment and neglect have consequences.
When children act out because their needs are not being met, because they have experienced trauma, or because their nervous systems are dysregulated, who should endure those consequences?
Apparently children, despite the fact they have no say in most of what leads them there. They have no control over the homes and neighbourhoods they grow up in, the schools they attend, being disabled, or the bullying and mistreatment they may experience.
Our biology, neurology, genetics, environment, and experiences all shape who we are.
We force children into situations before they’re ready, without proper guidance or support, then punish them when they don’t meet our expectations, even though we set them up to fail.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein
Why the hell do we keep doing this?
We force kids to attend school for 6 hours per day. We force them to sit in their seats, raise their hand to speak, and ask permission to use the bathroom. They’re not allowed to dance or play while the teacher is talking. They have to complete their worksheets, otherwise they might be kept in for recess.
At home, they better eat the food in front of them because their kitchen is not a restaurant, and they’d better appreciate what they have because plenty of others have it much worse.
They better watch their language and keep themselves in line, otherwise they’ll end up grounded or in detention.
We expect obedience and respect because we’re The Adults and they’re The Children. If they won’t comply, there will be Trouble.
We don’t care about their backstory.
If you talk back to the teacher, you better believe you’re getting sent to the principal’s office, even if you were just repeating something you heard one parent say to the other last night.
We don’t care about why the behaviour is happening.
If you hit another student at recess, you’re sure as hell getting suspended, even if that kid has been relentlessly bullying you for months. All the adults knew, but nobody did anything to help you, and now you’re in trouble because you had to take matters into your own hands.
The real world is tough, so suck it up. It’s best to learn these lessons now when you’re young, so you don’t continue acting like this when you’re an adult.
Imagine
You’ve got ADHD and have a hard time focusing in class, sometimes you forget to raise your hand and speak out of turn. The teacher keeps reminding you and threatens to keep you in for recess the next time you interrupt. Except you have ADHD, so you forget her warning, and you also forget to raise your hand.
Lots of other kids speak out of turn, but they don’t get in trouble because they don’t annoy the teacher like you do. You can tell she doesn’t like you, she’s frustrated and doesn’t know a better way to get her message across.
Again and again, you’re punished for something you can’t control. You figure this must mean you’re a “trouble maker” because no one else gets in trouble as often as you do.
School of hard knocks
Or imagine this
You’ve been tormented, bullied, and picked on by the same group of kids for months. You’ve tried telling the teacher, you even tried telling the principal. They told you to work it out amongst yourselves.
It’s the real world, after all, you need to learn how to settle your own disputes.
So you do. You tell those bullies to knock it off, or else. They just laugh and keep at it, coming up with increasingly cruel ways to hurt and humiliate you. Eventually you can’t take it anymore, and one day you punch the ringleader.
The teacher on duty drags you to the principal’s office. Your parents are called to pick you up and you’re suspended for the rest of the week. You don’t care — or at least you didn’t, until your parents doubled down on the punishment, taking away all electronics and grounding you for two weeks.
Now you’ve got a chip on your shoulder. You’re mad because no one listened to you, they’re still not listening to you, and those bullies got away without any consequences (except one has a bloody nose).
“Did you learn your lesson?” they ask.
That depends.
Did you learn it’s wrong to hit? You already knew that. (Although it was confusing the time your Mom cuffed you upside the head for smacking your little sister, that didn’t make much sense).
The lesson you come away with is adults can’t be trusted. They claim to have “zero tolerance” for bullying, yet do nothing to help when you need it. They always take the word of others over yours because you get in trouble a lot, so now you’re considered a “challenging student”.
You’re angry. You feel disconnected from and unwelcome at your school. They just see you as a “bad kid” and don’t care what happens to you anyway. What’s the point in trying if they’re always going to assume the worst?
The cycle begins in earnest. They lecture, you roll your eyes. They make a behaviour plan, it doesn’t get followed. You get in trouble and are suspended again and again. They throw up their hands and wonder why you “don’t learn”!
Adulting
Adults like to ‘scare’ kids about all the responsibilities they’ll have and the roles they’ll allegedly have to play when they grow up.
Apparently these adults have a very narrow view of what adulting means, and it revolves around capitalism: Get a job, pay your bills, “contribute to society” (aka make rich people richer).
Enh. Not for me, thanks.
I’m turning forty very soon, so I’ve been legally considered an adult for nearly 22 years. I’ve been self-employed for 13. I do not work a 9-to-5, I set my own schedule: One that works best for myself, my family, and my clients.
I have two degrees, despite nearly being expelled from high school for truancy (it was hella boring) — I managed to appeal the decision because I was still passing with high 80s, despite missing more than 65% of my classes.
Oh, I also had undiagnosed and untreated ADHD the whole time, and it just so happens I’m also Autistic.
Go figure.
Most of those threats adults levelled at me were bullshit. This is the real world and no, I don’t have to get used to it.
Stop the ride, I want to get off
It feels like we keep perpetuating a harmful cycle, passing this stupidity down from one generation to the next. “Back in my day” — listen, we’ve learned a lot since then, so shut the fuck up already.
I’m sick and tired of adults bullying, manipulating, and threatening kids with this imaginary “real world” that apparently awaits them. What happens, exactly? On your 18th birthday, you walk out the door into the real world, which has magically transformed while you were asleep?
It’s the same place with the same problems it had. They’ll be the same person they were the day before, and trying to force them to become someone else just makes them feel like shit.
Instead, accept the kid in front of you for exactly who they are. Help them recognize their strengths so they can harness and build upon them. The reality is they’re going to need them when they go out into the world — y’know, the one they already live in every single day?
© Jillian Enright, Neurodiversity MB
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