“I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.” I cannot tell you how many times that has gone through my head in the last six months. I have been working a job, filling out scholarship applications, trying to figure out what classes I need to take this semester in college, and figuring out whether or not I am going to be moving out on my own sometime in the near future. That is a whole lot of stuff going on and I am sure there are many other people who are going through just as much if not more things than I am. But there is one defining difference between the millennials and the rest of the people who are struggling: we honestly don’t have any clue as to what it means to be an adult.

Now don’t get all upset, I am fully aware of the minority within the millennial era. This minority being those of us who actually know what we are doing for the most part and even if we don’t we figure it out. Our parents taught us what it would take to be an adult and showed us the reality of what it looks like to grow up. So yes, there are those of us who actually know what it is like to be an adult and have been doing it for a long time. It is this next generation that I am truly concerned about and here is why:

1. They don’t know how to budget.

I have talked to so many parents who just haven’t taught their kids anything about being an adult. I remember sitting in my first ever economics class and finding that 90 percent of the people didn’t even know what making a budget looked like.

2. They have never worked a job.

How is anyone supposed to learn what it means to be responsible and work hard if they are never required to work? They end up taking for granted everything that those before them have done and they end up being spoiled and lazy without any clue of what it takes to truly be an adult.

3. Their parents pay for everything.

Many people don’t learn the value of things unless they are paying for it themselves, and I am not talking just allowance money. I am talking about taking the money from point number 2 and using it to buy their own stuff. You would be surprised how suddenly someone will change how they take care of things based off of the fact that they had to pay for it themselves.

4. No one has ever shared what they went through to become an adult.

I was so blessed that I was told the stories of what my family members went through on their journey of adulthood. Things that make me say, “I am not doing too bad.” When someone is willing to come up to you and say, “I have been there,” it not only gives a little support but it also gives you the opportunity to share and tell the person how you got through it.

5. “Failure is not an option.”

For someone to admit failure is hard but not only is it hard, it is also rare. Nowadays everything revolves around success, fame, and money, no one is willing to admit to the failures they went through in order to achieve such greatness. Henry Ford once said, “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, only this time more wisely.”

This just scratches the surface of all the things that this generation is missing out on. Someone needs to teach these things to them. Just like anything else in life there is no way to know how to do something without being taught. So instead of blaming the millennials for being ignorant, maybe it is time that the elders stood up and taught us differently.