Why Is It Not Easy for Teens and Parents to Leave Peacefully with Each Other? This Is The

THESES

My name is Nechaeva Anna, I’m a student of 9th grade and the topic of my project is “Fathers and sons: Generation gap”. The head of my research work is Semyonova Irina Viktorovna, the teacher of English. The fathers and the sons’ problem has always worried man. But nowadays it is one of the most important topics. Why do teenagers have disagreements with their parents? Of course, teens have their own difficulties and problems, but they also can bring joy. Adolescence - is a turbulent time. Teens cope with emotional ups and downs. Boys and girls want to be more independent, they may not like restrictions, which are imposed by their parents. Fathers and sons consider the world from different points of view. Children, in the opinion of the fathers, lead mankind to catastrophe (cultural, ecological, etc.). Fathers, in the opinion of the children, are the break on the way of progress. The elders look after the children and make all sorts of sacrifices to bring them up. Naturally, they feel they have a right over them. They want their children to follow their instructions as they have certain expectations from them. But the children, when they grow up, want a complete freedom in their thoughts and actions and unfortunately their thoughts and actions are just opposite to those expected by the elders. They revolt when any kind of restrictions are imposed on them. Consequently, the family breaks up and everything gets ruined.

Why is it not easy for teens and parents to leave peacefully with each other? This is the problem I am trying to solve in my research work.

So, the aim of my work is to explore the problem of generation gap, find out its reasons, interview the participants of the process and work out some recommendations to make life of both them calmer.

Working at the project I used different methods of research, interviews of parents, schoolpsychologist, a teacher of history and my classmates and friends.

I offered some tips about minimizing the conflicts, avoiding problems for parents and teens.

First of allI would like to highlight some reasons. There are 2 main causes: external and internal.

Information space differs from what it used to be. Information technologies play the main part in teen’s age. Contemporary children are more competent than their parents and they get knowledge, information, and experience from these resources. Parents lose their significance and importance and authority. Some years ago the child was aware of his social role in the family. Modern teens live in their own frames, they don’t have a definite role. The values and patterns of life have changed to a great extent. Today, everybody likes to live and behave in his own way.

The change of times.

The times have changed and there is a change of people’s interests, kinds of entertainment.

In the XX century teens used to sing songs, visit cinemas, go to libraries, walk in the park of culture, go to discos, spend a lot of time out with friends, watch TV rarely.

Nowadays teens spend a lot of time in front of computers, in thesocial net, in the internet,playing over the telephone, watching TV, having little time in the open air.

Revolution of values. The change of ideals.
In the XX century the ideals for teens were the following: teens wanted to be pilots, cosmonauts, war heroes. The ideal characteristics for children used to be courage, endurance, integrity, humanity, sensitivity, honesty, etc.
Nowadays some teens believe that it is cool to smoke, drink alcohol and become rich and successful without doing anything.

The state and its laws.
The society has become different and the state claims to it.

Nowadays according to the article№52 of the law “About education” parents must be responsible for getting education of their children till 18 years old. Parents should follow this law. Otherwise they will be answerable for teens’ missing school, low attendance.( paying fines )

Crisis of economics (unemployment).

The crisis of 2008 has gone, but not all the families could cope with it.

The crisis of the family

Everybody speaks today about the crisis of it.

Modern families are families with a lone parent, parents living in civil marriage, coming fathers. It is now destroying family life completely... The child is in bewilderment, he doesn’t know how to behave in this or that situation.Parents expect him to do this way, but he doesn’t have this experience and the conflicts start to take place.

Internal reasons. Relationships in the family.

Comparison.

Parents often compare their children with others and with themselves in their childhood. It’s one of the reasons, which leads to conflicts. But of course it is wrong, because every child is a person, with his own opinion, behavior, habits and views.

Excessive restraint.

Excessive restraint may also be the cause of problems. Teens want to be more independent, require less control, and a little trust.

Disrespecting of the personality.

Also, one of the reasons is disrespecting. Frequently, parents can’t understand, that their child is an individual, they only demand and don’t try to talk to their children, to see who they really are.

Dictatorship of parents.

Parent’s advice is a dictatorship. When children become older, they want to obey their parents less and less. If parents don’t realize it and don’t change the way of informing children, more neutral, conflicts will be unavoidable. Parents are always giving advice and nagging children forgetting about his point of view.

Criticism, mockery.

Some parents prefer criticizing kids, their hairstyle, clothes, appearanceand friends, instead of analyzing actions, trying to understand the reasons.

Bad habits.

If parents have bad habits such as smoking or drinking alcohol, one day they can’t convince their sons and daughters, that it is unhealthy, if the parents-adults do it, children subconsciously think, that it’s a norm.

Lie and insincerity.

There are situations when lie happens and teens see and realize it, if parents lie to each other, friends, colleges, kids think, it is normal and start telling a lie to them.

Spending little time with teens and being busy at work.

Parents are too busy at work; they have to do it, to earn money for the family, to support their interests, hobbies’, extra lessons. They don’t see their children very often because of late coming home from work, the only question is asked by them about their success at school and the reply is always “It’s OK”.

Consequences.

Every problem has it’s own consequences, and some of them are fatal. Teens run away from their home; start to hate their parents;withdraw into themselves; become diffident; can’t trust anybody or even kill themselves.

Therefore, the problem of "Fathers and Sons" is a personal bias against each other, because we can solve it through peaceful means, without resorting to extreme measures, if the older generation is more tolerant to the young generation, somewhere, may be, agreeing with him, and the generation of "children" will be more respectful for the elderly.

Secondly I tried to consider this problem in literature.

Generation gap in literature

Writers and poets draw peoples’ attention to the relations between youth and parents:Contemporary authors are A. Aleksin and his book “Home advice”, a French writer Anna Govalda and her “95 pounds of hope”. The plot of the story is misunderstanding, what is happening with the son, his worries. The parents don’t want to regard him as he is, his mistakes, failures. He starts to think about himself as an unsuccessful person, unlucky one. Only grandpa believes in him. The author tried to show the role of the adult in the life of the boy, when he is looking for his niche, purpose in the life.

Some novels by Pushkin “Dubrovsky”,”Snowstorm”, “Captain’s daughter” and “Romeo and Juliet”. Love is not by love, but“a love-match”, but it is marriage of convenience. Fathers don’t take into consideration children’s interest, approve their choice.

Thirdly I tried to interview thereal participants of the process: my classmates, parents, school physiologist.

My classmates’ survey.

I conducted a survey among the students of our school. I interviewed 18 teenagers and found out, that 14 of them have some problems with their parents. The most typical problems are: school (bad marks, behavior, missing school), misunderstanding and differences between generations. The maincauses of the problems and the results are marks at school, friends, lie, misunderstandingand behavior, differences between generations, awkward age, different opinions, looks, and tastes.
Parents apply different kinds of punishment. The most common ones are prohibition of walking with friends, using computer, watching television, deprivation of pocket money.

I also asked interviewers to give some peace of advice, how to avoid problems, if some problems appear, how to overcome them.
Classmates’ tips:
Parents and their children should find a compromise. Teens should do their best at school and try to get good marks, give promise to correct mistakes. Also to solve problems, parents and teens only

need to talk, try to understand each other.

My view of the problem
Talking about me, I have sometimes some problems with my parents. The main reasons are: misunderstanding, mess in my room and my laziness, and it becomes a reason of our conflicts with my mom.

It was interesting for me to find out the reasons of conflictsof my mom and granny, when mom was a teen, the only reason of misunderstanding between them was mom’s late coming home, because she walked a lot.

My teachers’ survey

The teachers of our school are also parents.In my survey I tried to cover a wide range of parents.I asked them about their relationships with children, problems and the ways of overcoming them. I interviewed 5 participants: (Marina Eduardovna – a teacher of physics, Alla Anatolevna – a teacher of primary school, Olga Aleksandrovna- a school librarian,Larisa Victorovna-the headmaster,Elena Viktorovna-a teacher of Russian).

Their points of view are very important for me.

The results are the following:

Most of them have fine, friendly relationships, no disagreements, conflicts, good contact with them, showing interest to the life, no punishments, but discussing together the reasons of some

actions, analyzing them and finding the ways out.

Larisa Victorovna shared her problems with her sons.Being in 8-9 forms they demanded more freedom, independence, and self-dependence. They worried, tried to keep them on a short lead. The results of it were making a row. Then they started learning to come to an agreement and compromise.

They gave their tips for parents:

Be attentive to the child, communicate, share their secrets, views, discuss some actions of people in life, films, literature, do chores together, convince in something, give them understand the rightness of the solution, find the wave of the child, take teen’s side, don’t humiliate, shout and scold, every day 30 minutes of active communication, try keeping a good contact with children, when he becomes older, never tell a lie,no aggressive emotions (trying to postpone the talk),never criticize the friends, but analyze and discuss their actions together, allow friends to visit your home,always follow «taboo», have a common point of view in bringing children up.(both parents),never have a row, criticism of each other, quarrels in child’s presence, love and trust, listen to them and hear them. Elena Viktorovna(a teacher of Russian) points out that the main mistake is that, parents want to understand everything, give a mark, teach how to do correctly, share their experience, though their children are people of the other time, they don’t need this experience. Teens grow up and their personal space grows together with them, but parents are not ready to it, they can’t trust them.

School physiologist’s opinion.

It was interesting to find out school physiologist E.N.Tichonova’s point of view. In her opinion that everything comes from the family. Conflicts take place in every family. It is normal. They are the moving power of the development of the person. If the family manages to avoid them at teen’s age they will appear later after twenties. Sometimes peers come to her with their problems, but very seldom. When parents have high necessity for help of specialist and the main problem is school, they can’t make them study, they apply to physiologist.They had lost the bridge between them and their children somewhere earlier, and it is difficult to restore lost relationships. She advised to follow these recommendations: try to take child’s side, speak with him, let him talk and ask his emotions, feelings, when people speak, their emotions are transformed into thoughts, find joint activity, interests and do it together, allow the teens to display themselves in various activities, fathers should pay attention to their adolescents.

Conclusion.

In conclusion I’d like to say that Generation gap is not that serious a problem if families can learn to sit over dinner and talk or sit in the living rooms over a cup of hot comforting coffee and talk the things out, ironing the difference and sharing the experiences. When this communication barrier is ruined and the ice broken, the problem does not remain that serious anymore. Talking it out calmly and coolly, with the idea of sorting things out, changing for each other and changing for better can be the most helpful instrument in bridging the generation gap. Family outings, vacations, tours, to picnic-outings, often with the family can be effective ways to find understanding between parents and children. Watching movie and discussing them will be the start of a healthy dialogue between members of the family. Such small things and steps can do wonders in healthy family atmosphere and reducing friction between two generations that are right in their own respects. Their only fault is that they are viewing the same object from opposite directions. Age, time and experience or the lack of it, forces them to do so.

The Fathers and Sons’ problem is an actual problem nowadays, it’s also a philosophical problem, which has been existed all the times and no one can find out the solution. But we can try to minimize the consequences, overcome the problems and try to avoid the problems. The most difficult thing in parents’ destiny is to take their child as he is with all shortages, features, learn to forgive offences, mistakes, wrong steps.

I hope the results of my research work will be very useful for me and my classmates. I presented my investigation to my classmates, our parents and I suppose using my practical advice their relationships will improve and life will be easier and happier.