"Clean your room! Don't do that! Stop
watching that stupid television, don't you have a book to read? Didn't I tell
you to clean your room, do you want to be a slob when you grow up? Go to
school, don't you have school today? When I was a kid . . ."
Welcome to the lives of almost every teenager
in North America. To most parents, when the above words are spoken, they expect
to see their teen rush at the
opportunity to serve them. The above words mean something to them and they
think it means something to us teens. They don't understand that the words go
in through one ear and out through the other. Does a German understand the
words of an Italian? No! Does a Chinese
man understand the words of a Greek man? No! The reason, they are two
completely different languages. Now although parents and their kids speak the
same language, parents don't understand that we tune out of English when we
want. If we know something is going to be asked of us and we don't want to do
it, we turn our brains into "Nag Mode." To define Nag Mode, is
simple. Every syllable that comes out of the mouth of an adult is heard as
'nag.' For example:
Adults say:
"clean your room! ."
Kids hear:
"nag nag nag!"
Adults say:
"Stop watching television."
Kids hear:
"nag nag nag nag nag nag nag."
They think of us as being lazy, and
irresponsible, selfish and useless. Some adults quiver when they hear how we
will one day run this world. What makes us lazy, the fact that we watch an hour
of television after a hard day at school, before eating dinner and doing our
homework? Why are we irresponsible, because we don't have time to walk the dog
due to us studying for our upcoming exam? We're selfish because we want peace
and quite for when we study? And useless because we can't run any errands for
them when we're taking that one hour out of our day to relax. They do, do a lot
and I respect them and all, but give us some credit for a change. Is it our
fault that almost every house has at least one television bigger than 22"
and that basic cable comes with at least thirty channels? They keep telling us
their stories about when they were kids, and it always has to do with something
we can't help.
"When I was
a kid we had a 13" black and white television, and if you had BETA . .
."
"When I was
a kid, our schools were 14 miles away and we had no shoes. We walked bare foot
through mountains, and had to wrestle crocodiles . . ."
"When I was
a kid, we never had music!"
Like we really want to hear about their pet dinosaurs,
and what they had and never had. It's fun to hear how adults can
over-exaggerate and all but what can we do about technology? Is it our fault it
exists? They don't understand how times have changed, and how kids are growing
up in this, the modern world. They grow up with music, and sports, and fast
cars. Adults criticize these kids. Just the other day I was at the mall and two
Greek women were talking about how I looked and what kind of person I must be
(in Greek of course,) not knowing I myself was Greek. I turned to them and
translated 'never judge a book by its cover' in their language. The expressions
on their faces would have made a great Kodak(c) moment, however I don't think
my camera catches the particular shade of red that was expressed on their
faces. They think it's easy to look the way we do, but we take pride in our
'grooming' ourselves. This goes to show how times have changed. Kids no longer
wear uniforms to public school anymore. We have the freedom to wear what we
want. However, is it our looks that make adults think we're irresponsible and
lack values? There are the few that look odd, act odd, and . . . well . . . are
odd, but do those few speak for the rest of us?
All kids ask for, is to be treated like they
deserve to be treated. How will putting them down and insulting them, make them
feel better about themselves and their surroundings? There are many intelligent
minds out there that have yet to be discovered. Teachers look at a lot of these
kids and think of them as being punks and like to pick on them because they
don't pay as much attention in class, as the rest of the students. They don't
spend as much time with these kids because they think that they're going to
grow up and be nobodies in life. What they look at as fooling around and not
paying attention, is really lack of interest. Lack of interest because the
class is too boring. To open up these minds classes have to have more life in
them. I mean, who wants to be in a classroom for an hour and listen to a
sustained, monotonous voice speak rather slowly as they take notes? I mean no offense to those teachers, but put
yourself in that position and contemplate how it may feel. This seems like
laziness to learn. Laziness, leads to selfishness, which leads to dishonesty,
which leads to lack of values. For example:
Mark's mother tells him to clean his room. Mark
is watching "Honeymooners" reruns at the time and is too lazy to
clean it. Besides it's the one where Ralph takes the gang to his boss's house
for dinner, one of his favourite episodes, so he says he cleaned it. Mark's
mother finds out the truth because his little sister Sarah ratted him out.
Mark's mother doesn't think her son is a really bad person, but she can find
room for lots of improvement.
Mark's laziness to clean his room makes him
selfish, in which he doesn't want to help his mother. He would rather watch
television. In order to continue to watch television, Mark must lie to his
mother which makes him dishonest. Mark's mother finds out that her son was
lazy, selfish, and dishonest and begins to believe that he lacks values.
It is true that many kids are lazy for no
apparent reason, and that they do have better things to do with their time. And
instead of putting them down and saying, "Hey Paul, why don't ya get up
and do something instead of watching that damn T.V. all the time." They
can try to include kids in their activities, or reward them for what they have
done. The better the job done, the larger the reward. This way kids are
encouraged to do something around the house.
The last point I would like to make is that
kids want to be heard. A good example here is when it was time to go school
shopping. Two weeks before school started my father told me to write a list of
everything I needed and that upcoming weekend we would go and get everything.
The weekend passed and I had not yet gone. I asked again the next day when he
had returned from work and he told me, "you never said anything about
going school shopping. You have to wait till next weekend now." Having my
older brother and mother witnesses to both of these encounters, they told him
how I already said I wanted to go school shopping. He changed the subject and
continued another conversation. Now I'm sure I could have reminded him that
weekend, rather than just writing a list and giving it to him, he's a busy man,
but the fact that he couldn't even remember me telling him about it really got
to me. And that is why I say kids want to be heard. I'm sure many things that
kids say are senseless and better off unheard however there are those
intelligent minds out there that can actually say something, worth saying. And
it is those kids that should be listened to.
To conclude I would like to say that kids
shouldn't blame adults for looking at people and criticizing. I mean even kids
criticize other kids and adults, however the feeling is different when you are
called dumb by a classmate, and called dumb from your teacher. But to tell you
the truth I don't think kids should really care about what others say when they
criticize. I'm pretty sure people didn't tell
Bill Gates that he was the coolest guy on earth! Thank you!
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