When a parent has a troubled teen, like so many I talk to today, they tend to go underground and then resurface, I know I do. I think I am in one of my resurfacing moments and it feels good!
I wanted to share with you an article in the Wall Street Journal “Want My Advice? Um, Not Really”, it talks about conversations between parents (Boomers) and Generation Y – now ages 16-32. That is the age range of my family, the youngest is 16, then 18 and the oldest is turning 25 next week.
Communication can be a struggle and my mantra of late has been “listen, keep your mouth shut” I know in my heart they really don’t want “to hear” my advice. Read the article, I was enlightened and think you may be too. Hopefully it will help to better understand where “they” are coming from and why “we” are so out dated; as the article claims “even more than the generations that came before us”.
The article in the paper (not the on-line version) had 6 tips “from young adults for their advice-giving elders”:
- Question Your Assumptions: What worked in your youth might have little relevance today
- Offer suggestions, not pronouncements: Say ‘you could’ not ‘you should’.
- Welcome a dialogue: Listen, don’t lecture; you’ll learn things and give better advice.
- Resist saying: ‘When I was young…’
- Don’t be little technology: If you are critical of social media, young people may dismiss you as a dinosaur.
- Accept your limitations: The young understand the world today. Sometimes the best advice is: ‘Trust your instincts.’
For myself as a grown adult, with my father whom is 89 years old and I in my mid-fifties, feel he does not understands what it is like parenting teenagers today and I think “he is out of touch”. That is pretty sad, now if my mother were alive I think it would be different. But with my father, I have a tough time being honest about what is really going on. Looking back that may have always been true even as I was growing up. In contrast and how my kids may feel about me, personally I don’t feel I am that out of touch, but who knows.
What is it like for you? How do you handle these generational issues, not only with the teens but also grandparents and great-grandparents? I hope to hear from you, we have not dialoged in a while and I miss all my blog contacts, which I know is my fault. So I invite you to comment on how things are going for your family, especially now that school is back in session. I should be sharing more soon.
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Well put. I loved that play when I was a kid. I guess times really have not changed.
I’m reminded of this dialog from West Side Story (c. 1961):
Doc: Why, when I was your age…
Action: When *you* was my age? When my old man was my age, when my brother was my age… You was never my age, none of ya! And the sooner you creeps get hip to that, the sooner you’ll dig us!
Doc: I’ll dig you an early grave, that’s what I’ll dig.
Harsh, but true, I suppose.