Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for May 05, 2024

The real snowflakes are parents who are constantly in a panic about their kids not being strong or tough enough. Every generation believes the succeeding generation is soft or spoiled, yet the succeeding generations overcome obstacles, find solutions from problems previous generations considered unsolvable, and manage to make life a little bit better.

IMHO you can see quite a bit of Joan in Alex in Panel 6.

Yeah, that SOUNDS like a plan, Alex, but it won’t work. The way schools are set up these days, the second your kid defends himself, he’ll be just as suspended. Or expelled outright. And if he does it OFF school grounds, criminal record ahoy. The snowflakes run the asylum now.

In my experience growing up, the bullies find you, you don’t need to find them…

Alex refuses to be another June Cleaver. You go, girl!

Bullies come in many forms: physical, financial, bureaucratic,…

I generally find Trudeau thought-provoking. On this one, it’s the evolution, stupid. Various forms. Started with blind evolution of the genes with no idea what was going on. Then there was selective evolution driven by sex, where various actual characteristics could be considered above the level of the genes.

Then we humans recently added technological evolution, and “Katy, bar the door!” We humans are in a lot of trouble, and this cartoon is about one of the interactive effects because technology has made children too expensive to follow Ma Nature’s favorite approach. We love our kids too much to have lots of them so the best two can survive into the next generation.

(That’s how it has to work on average, but since we can’t keep up with the GAIvatars, I think we’re coming to the endgame RSN. Negative resolution of the Fermi Paradox?)

You live within the reality you’re put in. If your reality / setting changes, you adapt. Most people do despite the mocking or disbelief of others.

One problem with kids today, though, is that they are never allowed to be kids the way my generation was. I walked a quarter mile to school ALL BY MY SELF in Kindergarten. There were only a few parents picking kids up at the end of the day, almost everybody walked or biked. And most of us were allowed to go out and roam around the neighborhood and play in the nearby park with no parents hovering over us…. and so we invented our own fun and learned to solve problems.

The irony is that although people try to say kids were safer doing that in those days, that’s only because things that DID happen didn’t get lots of publicity; studies say kids playing outside today are probably SAFER than they were then.

It would be nice if we could strike some balance between “Misery is good for you” and “You must be protected from everything.” Instead of it being either one or the other.

I think Trudeau is just being sarcastic. There’s no way that any parents would ever want their kids to suffer bullying….Okay, I’ve seen some videos and heard some stories about parental thinking that kids need to toughen up, but I can’t believe Alex would ever do that…

Also, I don’t remember at all their kids in this strip.

Don’t hire a bully. You’ll never get rid of him.

Kids today are worthless because they’re not perfect children like I’ve deluded myself into thinking I was.

Trudeau has no faith in young people.

I laugh, but I would be an awful parent. Coddling my kid to keep them safe as possible and then having a frustrated fit upon discovering said child to be utterly incapable of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on their own.

Re. panel 1, what’s a “parent alert”?

Off-topic, but a legitimate query…do single-eyed people take their eye-patch off at home? I would think it would feel like taking your bra off at the end of the day.

Better use one of the tall girls. :)

The second hardest, second most important, and second most rewarding job in the world is teaching.

Guess what’s first in all 3 cases.

(peruses comments)

Leo’s always been the voice of reason so Trudeau probably expects us to side with him, not Alex. ;-)

Why are people in their forties talking like people in their seventies? Weird strip. Anyway, kids being anxious about their bodies, including height, is absolutely nothing new or snowflake-y. Absolutely bizarre to single THAT out instead of like… not having the right shade of blue hair, idk, something older people think signifies snowflake-ness.

Anyway, I guess regularly having drills to defend themselves from being murdered in school isn’t enough adversity. Somehow.

I was never concerned about the issue with the girls being taller than the boys, and I don’t remember any boys ever talking about it when I was that age (parents did, however!). Of course I (male) was a big kid, got my height early, and was on the older end age-wise of my class, and I never experienced that problem at all.

I haven’t seen anyone comment about Alex’s statement in the 5th panel: “I’m just glad it’s not another problem we can fix.” I think that says a lot right there!

I was told to take the leader of the group of bullies out by my dad and mom. It worked, and I gave the same advice to my son, it worked too, I was called in to meet with the principal who wanted to suspend my son. I told the principal , if you want to suspend my son for defending himself against the knowed bullies of the school well you going to have to answer a lot of questions about your leadership as there will be a review, and the board will hear about this loud and clear as there a lot of parents who are upset that these bullies get away and support my son for standing up to them. Plus get ready for the news crew when I tell the story and how you fail to protect our kids.Ever teacher, and worker, in the school all thank me for tell my son to stand his ground.

Must be too much Disney and their characters teaching all-inclusiveness and other unholy doctrine. BTW, let Junior go outside and dig his hands in the dirt and grass. Mother Earth loves that sort of human interaction. ☮️

My neighbors are helicopter parents. I’m not. They think I’m too relaxed with my kids.

Does anyone here realize that Doonesbury is and has always been satire?

Alex, NO! Seriusly, NO!

Do what my Dad wanted. Military School. Why wait for actual war to have PTSD?

I didn’t need a bully. Just time to go places on my own. Times and boundaries were set. My coming and going was monitored. I was often with friends and always had change for a pay phone. With cell phones for a leash, it should be easier today. But a climate of fear blankets the adults not the kids.

How can anyone like Alex…?