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 wantto be a slob when you grow up? Go to school, don’t you have school today? When Iwas a kid . . .”Welcome to the lives of almost every teenager in North America. To mostparents, when the above words are spoken, they expect to see their teen rush atthe opportunity to serve them.
The above words mean something to them and theythink it means something to us teens. They don’t understand that the words go inthrough one ear and out through the other. Does a German understand the words ofan Italian? No! Does a Chinese man understand the words of a Greek man? No! Thereason, they are two completely different languages. Now although parents andtheir kids speak the same language, parents don’t understand that we tune out ofEnglish when we want.
If we know something is going to be asked of us and wedon’t want to do it, we turn our brains into “Nag Mode.” To define Nag Mode, issimple. 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 makesus 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, becausewe 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 uselessbecause we can’t run any errands for them when we’re taking that one hour out ofour day to relax. They do, do a lot and I respect them and all, but give us somecredit for a change. Is it our fault that almost every house has at least onetelevision bigger than 22” and that basic cable comes with at least thirtychannels? They keep telling us their stories about when they were kids, and italways 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 hadno 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 hadand never had. It’s fun to hear how adults can over-exaggerate and all but whatcan we do about technology? Is it our fault it exists? They don’t understand howtimes have changed, and how kids are growing up in this, the modern world.
Theygrow up with music, and sports, and fast cars. Adults criticize these kids. Justthe other day I was at the mall and two Greek women were talking about how Ilooked and what kind of person I must be (in Greek of course,) not knowing Imyself was Greek. I turned to them and translated never judge a book by itscover’ in their language.
The expressions on their faces would have made a greatKodak moment, however I don’t think my camera catches the particular shade ofred that was expressed on their faces. They think it’s easy to look the way wedo, but we take pride in our grooming’ ourselves. This goes to show how timeshave changed. Kids no longer wear uniforms to public school anymore.We have thefreedom to wear what we want. However, is it our looks that make adults thinkwe’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.
Howwill putting them down and insulting them, make them feel better aboutthemselves and their surroundings? There are many intelligent minds out therethat have yet to be discovered. Teachers look at a lot of these kids and thinkof them as being punks and like to pick on them because they don’t pay as muchattention in class, as the rest of the students. They don’t spend as much timewith these kids because they think that they’re going to grow up and be nobodiesin life. What they look at as fooling around and not paying attention, is reallylack of interest. Lack of interest because the class is too boring.
To open upthese minds classes have to have more life in them. I mean, who wants to be in aclassroom for an hour and listen to a sustained, monotonous voice speak ratherslowly as they take notes? I mean no offense to those teachers, but putyourself in that position and contemplate how it may feel. This seems likelaziness 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 theone where Ralph takes the gang to his boss’s house for dinner, one of hisfavourite episodes, so he says he cleaned it. Mark’s mother finds out the truthbecause his little sister Sarah ratted him out. Mark’s mother doesn’t think herson 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’twant to help his mother. He would rather watch television. In order to continueto 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 beginsto believe that he lacks values.
It is true that many kids are lazy for no apparent reason, and that theydo have better things to do with their time. And instead of putting them downand saying, “Hey Paul, why don’t ya get up and do something instead of watchingthat 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 thereward. 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. Agood example here is when it was time to go school shopping. Two weeks beforeschool started my father told me to write a list of everything I needed and thatupcoming weekend we would go and get everything. The weekend passed and I hadnot yet gone. I asked again the next day when he had returned from work and hetold me, “you never said anything about going school shopping. You have to waittill next weekend now.” Having my older brother and mother witnesses to both ofthese encounters, they told him how I already said I wanted to go schoolshopping.
He changed the subject and continued another conversation. Now I’msure I could have reminded him that weekend, rather than just writing a list andgiving it to him, he’s a busy man, but the fact that he couldn’t even rememberme telling him about it really got to me. And that is why I say kids want to beheard. I’m sure many things that kids say are senseless and better off unheardhowever there are those intelligent minds out there that can actually saysomething, 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 forlooking at people and criticizing. I mean even kids criticize other kids andadults, 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 kidsshould really care about what others say when they criticize. I’m pretty surepeople didn’t tell Bill Gates that he was the coolest guy on earth!
