1) Understanding Their World
Teenagers aren’t aliens, but they do live on a different planet
Life is tough as a teenager – I wouldn’t want to go back – and as adults we often forget what it was like for us. You need to think back and remember how hard it was for you; your teenager will be going through exactly what you did. Teenagers today may seem very different: their hairstyles, fashion sense and musical tastes seem so alien, but the reality is that they’re not different! Today’s teenagers have the same insecurities that you had at their age. They wake up, look in the mirror and think, ‘Why me? Why was I made to look like this? Nobody will like me – my legs are too short and my nose is too big.’ Some feel they are failures while others think the world owes them a favour. In other words, they are the same as you and I!
Although your teenagers are not different from you at their age, the world they live in is unlike the world you grew up in. The world of the ‘00s is radically different from that of the ‘70s. It’s their world that is alien because it is far removed from anything you know.
The World of the 00s
In a teenager’s world today it is socially acceptable to take a ‘recreational’ drug, while back in the ‘60s and ‘70s it wasn’t. Young people were having sex but it wasn’t the socially accepted norm that it is now. The Daily Mail in 2005 told us that less than one percent of men and women are virgins when they marry, while a MORI poll in 2006 showed that twenty percent of Britons are sexually active before the age of 16. The world that our young people live in tells them that there is no such thing as a happy family life and no chance of anybody sticking to one partner for life.
We live in a post modern world where ‘there is no absolute truth’. We can each believe what we like as long as it works for us and doesn’t interfere with anyone else. The truth is often distorted, and this is seen as the norm, especially for politicians and those in power. With such widespread abuse of truth is it any surprise that our teenagers are often unable to distinguish right from wrong?
We can be encouraged though: once young people grasp an issue of ‘truth’ they will fight for it. The Make Poverty History campaign in 2005 was a classic example of this as many young people stood up against injustices in the developing world. Young people are concerned and do care.
A Changing World
Our world is changing at an unprecedented speed. In no other time on earth have we developed so quickly technologically. Today seventy-five percent of adults and ninety percent of young people own a mobile phone, compared to the very few who did just ten years ago. We live on the brink of environmental disaster as global warming and climate change continue to have great impact. Politicians consistently lie and let us down. Young people are growing up in a world where they have no hope. Our society has created a generation that no longer trusts or believes in anything. It is an insecure generation with a high rate of suicides and eating disorders.
Much of Britain is dark, and this is reflected in culture, as the recent film Kidulthood shows. It is a movie portraying ‘everyday teenage life’ – including bullying, drugs, sex and suicide. This is a bleak view of a teenager’s world which is no doubt true for some, but not all.
Hope
There is hope. We are not here to depress you and make you feel bad but rather to enable you to understand the world your teenagers live in and equip you to respond to it. Young people do listen to advice when it is given the right way. Our young people need to be given all the information so they can make informed choices.
As you look through the different areas on this website you will learn to tackle the big issues facing your teenagers. You won’t be confronted with information about drug types or a sex education manual. Rather, this website addresses the underlying principles behind issues you and your teenagers may be experiencing. Before anything can be done about problems with drugs, sex, or anything else, there needs to be a positive relationship between parent and child. The articles in this section will give you some building blocks to lay the foundation of such a relationship. When you can maintain a bond with your children through the good and bad times there is hope.
