One of these past mornings I was driving and listening to the radio. (That’s about the only time I do.) The guys on the morning show were having a topic that had to do with the fight between teen girls and their mothers. Cat fight! Yepee!

Seriously now, the whole conversation got directed into why is it that girls change so suddenly once they hit puberty and from “my little sweet girl” become the bitches of the block.

Well first of all it’s puberty – daaaah…

A couple of the callers and the moderators themselves were trying to send the girls the message they should undertsand why their parents forbid certain things, why they have curfews, why they do this why they do that: for the benefit of the kids. I don’t doubt that a bit. I would be doing the same thing. They even had one lady who called and talked about how grateful she was to her mom for not letting her stay out late go to certain parties (’cause we all know what’s going on there.)

What I have a problem with is their attempt to try and explain something like that to young kids (when you’re a teen you’re still young). It’s USELESS. They don’t get it. As long as there will be parents and kids there’s always going to be this misunderstanding. Why is that?

Well, lets take it one at a time.

The kids: kids (in general) will never ever get it that parents (who love their children) have to, sometimes, be harsh and forbid things. They are too young. They don’t have the necessary maturity and experience to be able to understand such a concept. They just can’t! Their brain doesn’t process yet such complicated issues the way an adult does.

One caller even brought up the fact that all of a sudden kids don’t want to spend time and do things together with the parents anymore. All they want to do is be with their friends. This is because of another concept children can’t understand: friends come and go, but family is the one who will always be there for you. I remember when I was at that age. And my parents kept trying to explain it to me. But, for all I knew, I was sick and tired of being with them all the time. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be with my friends. They were the ones I was having things in common with. They were the ones who would listen to what I had to say (without giving me the “oh your’re young, what do you know?”). They were the ones who would laugh at my jokes. They were the ones who would not criticize my taste in music or movies. They were the ones who understood why I thought that pair of jeans was cool, while that pair of trousers just sucked.

Of course that as time goes by we gain more experience, we start understanding that not everything that flies is food, we start seeing the ugly side of the human being, we start sharing the same tastes and interests as our parents, we start learning that family is the only one who will be there for us, we start understanding that we are not alone and that our parents won’t be around forever and thus start cherrishing them and appreciate them at their true value. And so on and so forth.

Parents: Don’t even get me started on parents. They are actually the ones to blame the most. As I said, kids lack the maturity to see things any other way than they do. The parents on the other side should. They should realize what’s going on and take a different approach and not of accuse, judge, point fingers and just plain forbid anything the kid wants to do, without the mere attempt of understanding… It’s a big NO-NO.

What they should do once they see the generation gap shaping up is be honest with themselves. First they should try and remember their situation at that age. It’s true that the values have changed; they will continue to do so until the end of the world, getting worse and worse.

Getting back to our topic, they should just start talking with their kids. Understand why they want to do what they want to do. Why they like what they like. Why wearing your pants half way down your butt is so cool (I never got it either). Why this, why that?

Next thing is stop judging. When you see them walking out of the house with their butts naked, instead of screaming and yelling at them that the only way they are allowed to leave is if they change or pull up their pants (especially if one of their friends are witnessing your scene), just let it go. Maybe try and convince them to pull them up just a little bit. Understand they won’t be dressing like this forever. So what if your neighbours will point their fingers at you for not being able to control your kid? Dressing code is a very superficial issue. If you take the above approach you will make your kid understand that you’re not trying to ruin his/her life (otherwise, no matter how much you explain to them that’s all they’ll understand anyway). You will have much better chances at having your voice heard in much more important issues (drugs, alcohol, school etc) since, when talking about them your child will not have the misconception that no matter what he/she does, you’re always going to say “no”.

Besides all of the above, just let it go. Understand that puberty is just a phase. It will go away. By you trying to impose your point of view in all matters will only make the situation worse and you might estrange your kid for a long time (if not forever). As a reblious attitutde they might even start doing bad in school, associate with gangs, messing their whole life forever.

I’ve seen this whole situation handled both ways. And I’ve seen much better results from parents who deal with this issue as described above than I’ve seen from those who took the much easier road: scream and yell baby.

Just be understanding, stop judging and embarrasing you kids in front of their friends and remember you were once like them.

Good luck!

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 4:47 am and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.