If I am having trouble with this, I wonder how young people are fairing. Maybe they don't notice; or maybe I am just channeling every parent's wish to keep their children innocent. But how can they not notice? If it is hard for us to sort things out, how do they do it? Let's take a peek. A couple of years ago, in a survey conducted by North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center we asked 1200 teenagers from schools all across Long Island to tell us their concerns now and for the future. One of them wrote: "I don't think this world is ever going to get better. To live in this world you have to be very very strong, because if you're not, the system will walk all over you…You cannot trust politicians because they are all snakes in the grass…you really cannot trust [anybody] but your family, and not even them half the time." Relationships, illness, separation, and death also weighed heavily on their minds. One wrote about the dissolution of his parents' marriage, "My parents are getting a divorce and now there is talk about my mother being forced to move out of the house and my father move in. And I have no say! I have lost faith in the court system. I thought we had the right to freedom of speech, but I guess actually [being heard] is another story…" We asked, "When you're confused about life, who helps you to sort things out?" Almost three-quarters said their parents and their friends fill that role. Far from rejecting parents in favor of peers, family is part of the solution, not the problem. Following the release of the survey results, in an all day long gathering of teens and adults at Guidance Center headquarters in Roslyn Heights, the young people talked about well-meaning parents who are overwhelmed and with little or no time for substantive discussion with them; and they talked about teachers that they admire but who are too preoccupied with preparations for standardized testing. One parent commented on her experience interacting with the young people: "What stood out for me the most was the observation by several of the kids that they need support from adults to tackle the challenging issues they face. Often, adults complain that youth are apathetic, lazy, unmotivated, or apolitical. Maybe it is our own apathy and fears that prevent us as adults from helping." And, an educator who participated in the discussion said: "Listening to the depths of emotion and world concerns from the students, I came away feeling that we are missing the boat with our kids. I know this is a generalization but, so many young people are walking around with such powerful feelings and we, as adults, are not helping them with those feelings. Our schools appear to be more interested in control, assessments, and achievement scores than the life events that affect our children." As I listen to the voices of young people living all across Long Island I am reminded again and again of a simple truth; and that simple truth is that connections count. It is the good connections in their lives that enable our children to bounce back from private crises such as illness, divorce, drug addiction, domestic violence, and death. And, it is the good connections in their lives - at home, in school, and elsewhere - that help them to sort out and rebound from the public crises such as war, school violence, corruption and scandal that beset us. It is our children's duty to scrutinize, question, and challenge the adult world that we represent, to discover ways in which we messed it up so that their generation can try and get it right; or at least a little better. Our job is to encourage them to challenge us and to love them just the same. Our job is not to let the uncomfortable feelings that get evoked in us when we are challenged cause us to abandon kids as they may have been abandoned by others before; and to always remember that connections count.
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