December 29th, 2004
Straight Talk asks teens: What bugs you most about your parents’ generation?
From Sawyer, 13: What bugs me about most parents is that they’re afraid to let us explore the real world because it might not be safe so they overprotect us when it comes to walking down the street or going trick-or-treating but they are completely lenient when it comes to letting us sit for hours in front of Halo 2 or eating junk food and getting fat. I mean, life in most American towns is not violent and dangerous, but the electronic games are violent and obesity is a danger.
From Farren, 17: Parents don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager today. They’re so stressed out on their own lives they simply dole out punishment and don’t sit down and learn who we are and what we’re going through. Others are naïve. They don’t realize there’s cocaine and pot and pain killers everywhere at high school or that their daughter is sleeping around. Kids today don’t know how to de-stress themselves and so they do it in negative ways. Basically, parents need to set the values but then back off enough so that we can explore our own beliefs and make our own mistakes. We need parents to believe in us, to be there when we need them, to love us when we make a mistake. That’s what is lacking: parents getting to know who we are and loving us for who we are. Why would kids NOT use drugs and sleep around—they want to feel loved! Drugs and sex feed the lonely feeling which is the lack they feel in their family life.
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December 29th, 2004
Straight Talk asks teens: What bugs you most about your generation?
From Jarrad, 16: We’re shallow. We’re too concerned about what others think. We can’t accept the way we look naturally and feel the need to dye our hair, pierce and tattoo ourselves, install fake breasts.
From Nick, 17: It seems like everyone follows what their parents believe, not thinking for themselves. I saw this especially around the election. Also, we’re very lazy and apathetic compared to other generations, like drones or sheep. We don’t care about others’ feelings. In fact, my generation doesn’t care much about anything.
From Farren, 17: We are lazy. We’re living in a comatose world: TV, pain killers—we’re like “living debris.” Girls are really naïve today, very promiscuous, doing drugs, needing to be as slim as possible, having the perfect body. Everyone’s overly dramatic, like they’re the center of the world. There is constant whining and needing of sympathy, and at the same time, a lack of sensitivity to others’ feelings. No one is nice anymore. Everyone should love each other. Respect shouldn’t need to be earned, it should be a given. My generation suffers low self-esteem in general and I think that’s because parents are more concerned with how other adults perceive their parenting job rather than getting to know who their kids are and parenting from that angle.
From Lennon: 18: An obvious annoyance about my generation is the consumer thing: how much we want expensive things, just the right look, just the right clothes. What I also find is that my generation has an inflated feeling of self-importance. A lot of my peers like to pass their responsibilities onto their friends. If the person resists, then they make that person wrong by guilt-tripping them. There is minimal sensitivity or caring of others’ feelings. We’ve got all these individual personalities and each one thinks they’re the center of the universe. Like demigods. It’s very imbalanced: take, take, take. Spoiled is not the right word. Demanding is not a strong enough word. “Commanding” is a better word. What one personality wants, it thinks it has a right to command. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that so many of my generation were born as “only” children.
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December 22nd, 2004
Dear Readers: Parenting is probably the only job that is guaranteed to be legendary. When your children have grown and when they gather with siblings or talk from the heart with friends, it will be always be about you, about their childhood, what it all meant and how it all fits together. As a parent and as someone who works with teenagers, I would like to write a letter today to other parents. I would like to take you on a journey with hopes of shedding light on why parenting has become so overwhelming and what you can do about it.
As parents, we are surely the most challenged group of individuals to ever take on the job. And here’s why: we Baby Boomers born in the 50’s and 60’s, raised under the influence of Dr. Spock, marked the most leniently-raised batch of children known to western culture up until that time. Compared to earlier generations, we were raised without strong boundaries and without traditional priorities.
Nationally, we enjoyed prosperous times: television in our living rooms, radios in our bedrooms, dishwashers and electric clothes dryers became common. As the long-standing patterns broke down, we also had more divorce than had been known previously, mothers began joining the work force. As children during this time, we had a freedom from authority that earlier generations of children hadn’t known. We talked without being spoken to, we came whether we were called or not, we questioned those in charge, we invented our own brand of music, we even decided what we would wear. In 1971, the federal law requiring girls to wear dresses and skirts to school was struck down by a teenager who instigated the lawsuit. Teens and young adults rallied against the war in Vietnam and the draft. We demanded something more than white bread on the grocery shelves. Many used drugs and turned to eastern religions. We grew our hair long if we were male and cut it short if we were female. We ushered in “free love” as the first generation with the pill and legalized abortion.
Childhood is supposed to be a time of following structure and patterns laid by a wiser, stronger, older generation. But our generation turned that all on its head. Even the most mild among us didn’t follow their parents’ path. That path didn’t even seem to exist anymore.
Now, we are parents ourselves. And where is our resume? A prerequisite of a strong leader is one who has first learned to follow. As a generation, we certainly missed that step! Yet we are expected to lead. And that is why it is so difficult for most of us to set clear boundaries for our children, to even know what those boundaries should be.
Let’s keep going in this journey and look at today. The amount of stimulation, the sheer volume of choices, the absolute warp speed of life today is mind-boggling, as you know. Now, imagine being a kid right now, born into this from day one. By our choices, not only is there a television in every living room, but often in every bedroom as well, with hundreds of channels, a violent or sexualized act showing every millisecond, many of them “real” and on the news. By our choices, a computer gaming industry has emerged bigger and more seductive than Hollywood luring especially boys to sit for hours in front of a screen immersed in violence, gore, and unearthly adventures. By our priorities, about sixty percent of mothers work now, often starting when children are infants. By our priorities, gone is the family dinner, swept away in schedules too hectic for home-cooked food. Gone is the simple joy of walking. Cars are used almost exclusively now, even to get a block or two down the road. And what has been, since time began, a time of teen angst, the time of first love and first kisses is now complicated by a conundrum of new arrangements that go by the term gay/lesbian/bi/transgender.
Can you imagine? And we thought it was complicated for us!
I am going to share with you something that gives me great hope.
There was a study that began with infants born in 1955 and ended when they were 40 years old, in 1995. It set out to find the parameters that made for a “successful” person—success being defined as “the capability of forming lasting personal relationships.” Amongst all the family dysfunction that turned up: divorce, alcoholism, violence, etc., the researchers could only find one “difference that made the difference” in determining what led to success. It was “demonstrative love and affection”. Despite dysfunction, the individuals who received this as children from at least one parent, grew to be “successful” adults.
The key word here is “demonstrative”. Forget the small stuff, the shoes on the floor, the messy bedroom, the new family room furniture you want—forget this 90% of the time. Instead focus your family attention on demonstrations of love. Your child needs to hear you say, “I love you”. Your child needs to feel your touch, the warmth and love that come through a hug or a back scratch or the simple stroking of a hand.
And your child needs to “see” your love, see that you will stand your ground for them when they are going astray. No child wants a life of drugs, alcohol, violence, or premature sex. But many teens find themselves there precisely because they are looking for that missing “something”—that demonstrative love and affection.
A demonstration of love is saying ‘no’ even when it’s not popular. A demonstration of love is having a plan as to how you will educate and enforce the values and lifestyle you know in your heart are best.
That’s our job as parents.
It’s not going to be easy, because we didn’t exactly get the right training—and for this we need to forgive ourselves—but this New Year, I hope you will choose to spend 90% of your parental energy making that plan, deciding on the standards of behavior that you are willing to stand for, figuring out a system of education and enforcement by which to make it work. I hope you will promote a slower, less media-filled, more human rhythm in your lives, starting with something as simple as having dinner together each night.
And most importantly, and easiest to do, I hope you will find a way to touch your child each and every day and say “I love you”.
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