It happened nearly every day.

Somewhere in the high school where I taught, a girl was missing class. She sat in the guidance office crying her eyes out because her boyfriend had found a new love.The counselor had set up a quiet room with soft music and a candle. She sent the girl there to desensitize and detoxify her emotional pain from the breakup. Depending upon the severity of her inability to cope, follow-up sessions in the quiet room might also have been scheduled.When I was growing up, “coping” was spelled out in eight simple words.It is what it is. Get over it.We were told these words after JFK and MLK were assassinated, my Spanish teacher was murdered, and race riots closed our school for three days.Forget about emotional trauma from teenage love breakups. Parents and teachers laughed at that.We had grown a thick skin from troubles and tragedies because we were not given other options. For today’s generation, a scuff on a $200 pair of sneakers and you hear an OMG (Oh my God!”) shouted across the room, followed by an act of disturbing hysteria.KidsHealth recommends that when children are stressed, parents should cut back on their activities and have them keep a journal to write down their anger and frustrations. The website also advises that days before a scheduled doctor’s appointment, the child should be told by the parent what to expect to reduce any level of anxiety.So a parent removes his kid from the baseball team so he can de-stress. Then the boy writes an obscenity-laced attack on everything that upsets him, which probably includes his parents for taking away his sport. Mom and Dad read it and then tell him, “Oh, good! Are you feeling better now?”Then parents follow the next advice. Four days before she goes to the doctor, Mom tells her daughter to expect an immunization shot. She tells the kid the needle won’t hurt. They will only leave it in for a few seconds. There will be a little blood too, but she’ll get a Band-Aid so the blood doesn’t get on her shirt.Oh, that will work. Now the kid has three full days to imagine that a foot-long needle will go right through her arm, causing a swimming pool full of blood, and this is after she’s been told there’s nothing to worry about!It seems to me there are two extremes here. My generation was told to figure it out for ourselves to move past every crisis, and a kid today spends three days in a quiet room because her BFF (best friend forever) has found a new BFF.In Psychology Today magazine, Monica Ricci writes, “… (parents) do their kids a crippling disservice. Coddling their kids and sheltering them from the negativity of the world means they will end up as adults with no ability to cope.”She adds, “If you love your kids, let them fail. Let them get disappointed. Let them lose the soccer game, the baseball game. Let them get cut from the cheerleading squad.”Ricci explains that these are “small adversities” that can teach kids the lessons of life that are necessary to cope with bigger problems they will inevitably face when they grow up.There was one event back in my day that went against the idea that “since life goes on, it’s time to move on” school of thought.When my father died in 1970, we had three days of mourning before the funeral. Professional criers were brought to the church so even if you weren’t feeling sad, you were expected to cry with the criers. My mother had to wear black whenever she went out in public. She could not send Christmas cards or celebrate any other holiday for an entire year. Mom displayed the book of funeral guests in our home so that our friends could see who came to pay their respects and who did not.Here’s what I learned from that experience.When I die I will have a sign displayed with these words in the opened top of my casket, which will be on display for one hour.It is what it is. Now get over it.Rich Strack can be reached at

katehep11@gmail.com.