What strikes me is how adolescent it is. It’s NORMAL in an adolescent. Maybe even good. (Adolescence is a strange time, cognitively…it is developmental though.) A touch of opposition/distrust is required then, for developing a capacity for independent inquiry. Somehow they don’t develop further.
My son is almost 10. The defiance is strong in him. God forbid he gets stuck there. I'll blame myself for not moving away from these hillbillies.
Is that the version you experience? I experienced it more in the sorta ‘people who are curious but didn’t go to college’…mostly hippies and rightwingers…in the SW. I am wrangling a defiant tween now—one that hates to read. But so far, his public school is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
I'm in Ohio, not too far from the Appalachian foothills in the rust belt. Rednecks, hillbillies, and so so so much poverty. His public school is doing okay and I purposely chose one with diversity. But he also hates to read! He does enjoy being read to and gets interested in history so there's hope!
I lived in that general area for a short time years ago and it was a fiasco. Dealing with the people—I just couldn’t get them. At all! It was eye-opening to find this out about myself. I didn’t know I was that sensitive to my social/cultural environment. I found a nice neighborhood but I struggled.
I really don't get them either. I understand who they are, but I can't figure out why. I've lived the same life they have and I don't buy any of the excuses about economic anxiety and all that bullshit.