“Our youths love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority – they show disrespect for their elders and love to chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up food, and tyrannize teachers.”
Socrates, c.400 B.C.

It’s easy to see the faults of modern-day youth, isn’t it. Drugs, underage sex, drinking, foul language, increasing disrespect towards parents and adults in general, anti-social behaviour, questionable morals, and little apparent sense of respect for authority. Now, add your own observations. Ah yes, it’s a dull, dreary and disheartening list!

Re-read Socrates’ statement, written some two and a half thousand years ago. It may help us adults, guardians and parents to realize that parental despair brought on by the debauchery, disobedience and disrespect engaged in by each generation’s youth seems to have been a recurring theme for a very long time.

Someone made the insightful observation that the generation gap between today’s tweens/teenagers and their parents is sometimes greater than that of the cultural gap between Irish people and Eastern Europeans. There’s a good degree of validity in that statement.

Now, a rule within this world is that humans have almost complete control over where we place or keep our focus of attention. For instance, when I’m not paying attention to what’s going on – staying tuned in to the sounds, signals and signs - in the kitchen, club, pub, or the spare bedroom, my child is at an increased risk of being hurt or getting into trouble – which will end up as hurt, anyway.

Another rule is that “whatever I choose to focus on, I will get more of.” If I focus on all the failings and shortcomings of today’s youth – or of my own child - then I will begin to notice all these things, and will become more fearful, agitated, despairing or confused. Alternatively, I could just as easily choose to put my focus on how most youngsters of today are upstanding, honest, doing their best, respectful, decent, forgiving and loving. Then, for certain, I will start finding hard evidence to back up these new beliefs and possibilities.