Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 26, 1991 TAG: 9102260078
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jane See White
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One, all of them had parents. Two, they'd all been trained by the school in listening skills so that they could serve as sounding boards for peers.
These young people had a lot to say about the shortcomings of modern parents, their own and others' - far more than we could include in the accompanying article. Here are some highlights:
"If you have something on your mind and you don't want to talk about it, they force you," one girl complained. Another added, "But they don't share their problems." And a third said, "My mom asks questions all the time. It just gets me annoyed. I spend 10 minutes telling her how school was, and she says, `So how was school?' "
A boy complained about parents who "judge your friends. You'll get a new friend and they'll say "What's his name? Who are his parents? What's he weigh?' " A girl said her parents judge her friends' parents: "They put your friends down and your friends' parents down. It bugs me when they don't trust me. A lot of times they won't let you do things because they don't trust other people, and they give you the impression that they don't trust you."
"I have a lot of friends whose parents are overprotective," said one boy. And a girl said, "They think of every possible bad thing that could happen, but they don't think about the good that could come out of it."
One girl complained: "I'll be expecting a phone call from a guy and I'll come home and my mom will say, `Two guys called,' and she won't know who they were. But she'll really get mad if I can't tell her who called her."
A boy said, "How about when they pick up the extension while you're talking on the phone and it's like they expect you to go, `OK, goodbye!' They expect you to hang up that very minute."
"My mom is always saying, `I want to be your friend,' and I'm thinking, `It's not going to work, Mom,' " a girl said. Another added, "When I talk on the phone, sometimes my mom is pretending to read a book and then she'll say, `Tell her to call him.' And I say, `Mom, you're reading a book, remember?' "
"If I'm one minute late getting home, they get really mad," a boy said. "But they go out and don't tell you where they're going or when they'll be back. You might be sitting there waiting to do something with them."
"My mom never admits she's wrong," a girl said. "She says she's not my sister and she's not my equal. And she's never wrong." Another girl said, "My parents are always asking me for my opinion, but they never ask on the big decisions."
"I hate it when they get mad in public, like with a clerk in the store or in a restaurant if a couple of pennies are wrong, they say, `I want to see the manager,' " one girl said. Another added, "Or I'm in the lower-level of the mall and Mom's on the upper level and she leans out and shouts my name." A boy laughed, "It's like, `Gee, I don't know who that woman is!' "
by CNB