Only with love

The spectre of violence continues to linger in schools across America, as people are shaken by the latest incident at Santana High School in Santee, Calif. Parents, school administrators, teachers and students themselves feel the fear, not knowing where this spectre will strike next. Most school children, though, are peaceful, and the violent are extreme rarities. Nevertheless, there remains a barrier between the generations where understanding and true communication appears to be fading. The so-called “generation gap” has rarely seemed so wide as it does now. Recent reports of teen-agers experimenting with sex at earlier and earlier ages rightly terrify most parents. Violence in music, television and movies directed at teen-agers appears to be at an all-time high. The gist of all this is that parents and teen-agers don’t appear to truly communicate, if indeed they ever did. There are differences in slang, interests and tolerance between the generations which seem insurmountable. However, at the root of it all is a generation desperately in need of closer contact with its parents. In a time where both parents work or, if a single-parent household, that parent is also absent, the coming generation innocently takes its cues from violence disguised as entertainment. Street-smarts are learned at younger and younger ages, and sex and drugs have moved into earlier and earlier grades. Parents will say it’s much harder nowadays to be a parent, what with all the influences tugging at their children with which to contend. Parents today did not have the sheer volume of society influences hitting them as much as it hits today’s children. As a result, today’s teen-agers feel the pressure to become adults much sooner. They see their parents as clueless and irrelevant and, to a great extent, they are correct. Parents see their children as misled, frightened and rebellious and, to an extent, they are correct. But saying it’s always been that way is not correct. It’s much worse today. Parents find themselves so intimidated by their own children and find them so uncontrollable that some have simply given up. What must happen to turn this around is for parents to take full responsibility to be parents – to make their children the number-one, top priority in their lives – and to make their children feel that love and responsibility. Only then can the respect a child should feel for his parent return. Only then can the fear end and love be born. L’Observateur