This post originally
appeared and was aired on Portland Radio Project.
Hey, can we stop treating
teenagers like they’re nuts, dishonest, or predatory?
Where did this COME from? I’ve taught a lot of middle and high school kids here in the Portland metro area and this seems to be one of the last legit biases. Most young people I know are loving, funny, they work hard, and they have personal integrity to burn. At first it just made me tired to have people say things like, “And you believed him?” or “I’m sorry, I can’t trust a boy to babysit my children.” Well, now it just makes me mad. According to the class in Adolescent Psychology, adolescents are inherently idealistic, not dishonest. Yeah, they are a bit self-centered, and wouldn’t you be if you were doing all the grown-up things for the first time and hoping that you were doing them right? Most teenagers I know are trying as hard and as anxiously as they can to please the adults in their lives, and they’re running scared because they don’t think it’s possible.
Cut ‘em a break, folks. You were there once, remember?
So true. It's as though we have amnesia about our past selves.
ReplyDelete