Usually teenagers open up to their friends much more than to their parents; it’s a common phenomenon. This also goes for teachers. A teacher should also be a friend – should behave as a friend, talk as a friend. Then the gap gets bridged. Once the gap is bridged, love flows; communication happens. And once communication happens, virtually all the problems are solved. The biggest problem is lack of communication.

Recently a follower of Guruji Sr Sri Ravishankar, founder of the Art of Living, asked this question:

Q: Guruji how to handle a teenage child?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Teenagers, when you have to manage them, you should know how to ride a horse – neither too lose nor too tight! Some times you let it loose, sometimes you hold it tight. So keep a balance.

I believe this analogy strongly hits home the advice that Guruji wants to give parents. No further advice needs to be given to them. However, for teenagers, Guruji has something more to say. What follows below is a message by him to all teenagers:

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Teen-age years are the most confusing years. You are no more a kid who can be pacified with toys and sweets, but you have also not matured enough in emotional terms. A new world has just opened up in front of you and it’s such a difficult time. On one hand, there are big highs! On the other hand, there are so many lows including loneliness. A child doesn’t feel lonely, but you do at times. Not only that, there are also so many hormonal changes taking place in your body. You become familiar with your own body, mind, emotions, urges and difficulties. Suddenly you begin to feel that nobody understands you because what parents say from their standpoint as parents – good or bad – doesn’t appeal to you. Long-term plans don’t exist. You want immediate solutions, immediate gratification, immediate, immediate… Everything should happen now! Instantly! You feel that adults do not understand you. And on the other hand, you can’t connect with small kids either. You have reached a stage where you find all the toys, all the simple games that you have outgrown, meaningless.

During these complicated years, you need to have hope. You need to develop an understanding about life; what you want to do, how to cope with your wants.

Dealing with emotions:

How to deal with our emotions? Big problem! Although we have grown older – beyond the ‘teenage’, we more often fail to grow beyond ‘teenage’ mentally. You know, our body grows in a particular sequence. In the first seven years, the physical body grows but the intellect does not grow; then up to fourteen years, the intellect grows. The period from 14 to 21 years is for emotional maturity. So the general belief is that you become physically mature, then intellectually mature and finally, you become emotionally mature.

However, many do not grow to that maturity at all. Lack of emotional maturity is always worrying about your emotions – feeling as though you are a victim of your own emotions: “Oh! I feel like this! I feel like that! What to do?” What will you do? Who cares about your feelings? Why do you worry so much about your feelings? Your feelings keep changing. Sometimes you feel bad; but the bad feeling doesn’t stay with you forever. It changes and you start feeling good once again; but even that ‘good’ feeling does not stay forever. Nobody can feel bad or good ALL the time; the good and bad feelings come like waves. You can’t stop a wave that has already arisen; nor can you make a wave rise just like that. Just as waves come and go, clouds come and go, so also emotions come and go. Waves of different emotion come. And they disappear. But we make it such a big issue: “Oh, I feel good! Oh, I feel bad! I feel this way, I feel that way, nobody cares for me…” – all these complaints keep bombarding our minds. This emotional garbage is so useless; and it is also a sign of emotional immaturity.

Emotional maturity, intellectual maturity, physical maturity; you need all these three ‘maturities’ to be a complete personality. Are you sharp and focused? Are you interested in learning and in growth? If yes, you have matured intellectually. And once you have matured intellectually, do not let emotional immaturity cloud your intellect. By the age of 21, you’re supposed to be emotionally and physically strong, and intellectually sharp. Hence, you acquire the right to vote, because you are supposed to be mature – an adult. But this seldom happens!

But what is the big deal about your feelings? I tell you, bundle them up and throw them into the ocean! Once you are rid of your ‘feelings’ you can be happy, in good spirits. Just examine why your spirits go down? More likely than not because somebody said something stupid to you. And why did they say a stupid thing? Because they had some garbage they needed to throw out; and you were there, ready to catch it. And once you have caught it, you hold on to it so passionately! Come on! Wake up! Don’t let your smile be snatched away by anybody!

In this world, everything cannot be perfect all the time. Even the best, the greatest of actions, performed with the noblest of intentions, will have some imperfections. It is but natural. Unfortunately, the tendency of our mind is to grab the imperfection and hold on to it. And in the process, we end up making our moods, our minds imperfect. Our souls reel with this nonsense.

It is imperative to get out of these cycles, and to become strong and courageous from within. And that which gives you that strength, that courage, that smile and that helps you to become unconditionally happy and loving is what is called spirituality.

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Thanks to Guruji for bestowing more clarity on this crucial aspect of Life.

I request you to forward this post to your contacts or tweet about this, so that the word spreads fast enough.

Apart from the mundane things and the day job, I have been speaking to a lot of Teens and of course Parents regarding safe online practices and the constantly changing and evolving cyberspace scenarios. I must say that these are really ‘Interesting and Challenging times’. With a lot of hype and activity going on, what with a complex convergence of social networking forums, real-time news feeds/leakages and a varied mix of multimedia spicing up the cauldron. It has never been this better, exciting and frightening….and believe me there’s still more to come…

Just completed a survey(shall post the survey report soon) with a few parents. The most obvious concerns were reflected in the survey and the 2 most common feedback/advice, that concerned parents would give their kids are as follows:

1. Don’t do anything which would put your Life in Danger.

2. Don’t do anything which might land you in jail or bring disrepute to family honour.

During this self-imposed sabbath from writing, I also had an opportunity to gel with a lot of teenagers at different forums -both online and offline. The 2nd most important concern (though paradoxical) on their minds is about how little their parents know about technology. (You may like to read this as well)

So for all my dear young friends, I believe this place (courtesy Google) is the right starting point to engage the oldies.

Psst…psst….the most important concern of some of these teens were that their ‘recently initiated’ parents were pestering them to befriend them on Facebook.

And as for the title of this blog post, its actually an ancient Chinese curse, which, while purporting to be a blessing, is in fact a curse -which translates to “May you experience much upheaval and trouble in your life”.

May the upheaval brought about by the rapidly changing technologies bring prosperity and loving connections instead. After all the ultimate purpose of technology should be to improve the quality of human lives.

….and yes, I promise to be in touch with you(my readers), more often…..Ciao

The above statement is actually my tag-line for the online and offline initiative of my Secure Childhood project.

One thing we all agree, that with every generation, human beings evolve as a smarter and intelligent specie. Such evolution brings along challenges of its own. And parenting is one of those challenges thrown up by life.

A lot has been written,counseled and dissected about this topic. What we usually term as a generation gap, looks even wider as far as understanding the nuances of technology goes vis-a-vis parent-child relationships. Rapidly changing technology adds to the dilemma and makes the gap look even broader. I have had parents telling me how handicapped they feel keeping pace with their teenagers while using and understanding computers. Students too, in their interaction with me have complained how their parents aren’t tech-savvy and why they prefer not to discuss jargons with them.

My experience, unfortunately shows, that this gap isn’t limited only to tech related stuff. It is also true about non-techie things. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if efforts are made to bridge the gaps in all aspects? Secure Childhood is not just about the technical aspects, its also about efforts to create a warm, loving and trustworthy environment between parents and children.

As I write this, I am reminded of an article written by Steve Pavlina. In brief this is what the article says:

• We as adults make a lot of mistakes and take wrong decisions not only as parents but also as human-beings. The results of these mistakes shows up later in life especially when your kids become teens and situations creating a lot of conflict and stress between parent-child arise.
• Steve goes on to give some advice on how to handle the situation of being trapped as a teenager by your own parents failings. The advice given by him is:

1. Accept the Truth of your situation

2. Take responsibility and exercise your personal authority

3. Communicate your desires and don’t complain

4. See the true intelligence of your parents.

5. Adopt substitute parents ( similar to the advice given by Robert Kiyosaki in his book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad)

6. Recognise that your parents are still right sometimes.

You can read the entire article “Smarter than your Parents” here

In conclusion, I would like to say that Parents are still the most wonderful people we have in our lives, even with their fallacies. They truly care about you even though they may be ignorant about certain things in life.  The collective experiential wisdom gathered by them over their life-time can truly guard children from vulnerabilities – both online and offline.

If you appreciate the views expressed above, then I encourage you to kindly add your comments at the bottom of this post. I would love to hear from you and have an engaging dialogue with my readers.