I worry a great deal about 28-year-olds today. When they graduated from high school in 2000, they probably expected their lives by the year 2010 to be very different than they are. And as a parent and employer of young adults, I’m concerned about their success.

Ill-defined as either the leading edge of the Millennials or the end of GenX, these kids were an inspiring group. They were digital early on, having learned the alphabet on their Texas Instruments computers and accessing the Internet on their parents’ dial up AOL subscriptions. With helicopter parents hovering over their every move, many enjoyed play dates, after-school activities, extravagant summer vacations, and success recognition with trophies and ribbons no matter their performance.

They viewed life through rose-colored glasses. They were in elementary school during the first Gulf War that seemed as easily won and with fewer casualties than one of their video games. Bill Clinton was president during their high school days when there was mostly peace and prosperity.

Having known nothing but praise and success, they had great expectations entering college. They aspired to be successful professionals with hopes of living a more exciting and fulfilling life than their Boomer parents. And at their 2004 graduations, they appeared to be on their way. The job market for college graduates was picking up for the first time since the late 1990s.

It was a taste of the security and success that they were so accustomed to. And it was a much-needed boost after September 11, 2001—probably one of the first moments of vulnerability in their young lives. As a country, we were optimistic. Saddam Hussein had been captured only months earlier and the United States was waging war on terrorism.

But as they got farther from their college graduation, the sense of entitlement they had as kids gave way to the harsh realities of life. George W. Bush, a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, crippling student loans, the Great Recession of 2008, and catastrophes like Katrina and the BP oil spill all dampened their optimism.

Many that I talk to and work with feel like failures. What happened? By age 28, they were supposed to be superstars, not disoriented young adults. But really, how is a kid who won a ribbon for coming in last place supposed to react to losing a job, an apartment, or even a relationship 20 years later?

Having owned my own business now for 16 years and having been a senior manager in larger corporations, I must confess that managing this group in today’s work environment is most challenging. Playing helicopter parent doesn’t work. Being a stern manager creates authority issues. Trying to be sensitive and caring only adds to the diminished self-image.

All a manager can do today with them is to identify the problem as quickly as possible, recognize it is not the result of the management style or the office culture, and accept the fact that managing young adults in the work environment requires career counseling skills that allow young men and women to come to grips with the reality of today’s economic conditions.

To ignore the problem is a mistake and will lead to serious performance issues.

But no matter how dark they may now appear, I have enormous faith in the 28-year-olds of 2010. They are smart, hard working team players, who as kids were taught to come together to solve problems. They might be stumbling around now in the depths of disorientation, but once they orient themselves to the realities of a new age, I think they and their younger brothers and sisters will end up saving the American Dream.

I can’t help but think of their grandparents’ generation. Having been children of the roaring 20s and then coming of age during the Great Depression and World War II, they too experienced the disorientation of change. But in their lifetimes, they also experienced the exhilaration of it from desegregation, to the end of the Cold War, to the invention of modern technology.  They always rose to the occasion, and there’s no reason to believe their grandchildren won’t rise to similar heights.

It is not fun to watch such happy and energetic kids become depressed young adults. But, my guess is that given some time and room to despair and recover, this group will end up achieving everything they expected to as high school students. It just may take a bit more time and patience than they thought.

–With help from Rian Madayag—James River High School Class of 1996