How Do You Bridge The Generational Gap? (A Case Study).

Generational gap is a difference in values and attitudes between one generation and another in a given setting, especially between young people and their parents. These differences originate from older and younger people not understanding each other because of their differences in experiences, opinions, habits and character and behavior. In today's usage, for instance, generational gap often refers to perceived communication gap between younger people and their parents or grand parents. Bridging the generational gap, or generation gap, then, implies considerig how to handle the differences of opinions and values between one generation and another regarding religious beliefs, politics, values, et al. In this case study of the interaction between parents and young people in a local church group to reflect on what happens in the larger society, from quality of church public address system to media production with respect to editing, image quality and grade of media devices, young people had drastically poor rating of the same utilities that adults had been at home with for donkey years. Then you consider songs for worship sessions and youths' complaints about timing of worship events, perceived youth exclusion or non-participation as well as monotonous style of worship sessions. The young people complained that the adults were not relating lovingly in a church group hitherto tagged "Friendship Assembly." The youth further complained about lack of encouragement from adults in terms of mentorship, employment, training and appreciation of a few youth workers engaged in speciall duties in the church. They explained that not many young people were engaged in such church work against their desires to get involved. Not surprisingly, adults in the meeting were visibly charged, agitated and quite defensive, if not totalitarian, in their uninformed reactions to the frank expressions of young peoples' frustrations which they had already devised escape routes for. These parents appeared mindless of the fact that they, themselves, and not the youths, arranged for the gathering on the pretext of halting the flight of youth from the particular church organization due to this perceived gap. At this point, this writer managed to find a space to announce to the gathering that the young peoples' views were given because those were there natural attitudes owing to their developmental challenges. That parents must be reminded that there were no schools for parenting known to mankind. That it took the efforts of dedicated men and women who committed themselves to research and learning from where they gained experience they recently penned down for parents who would care to know. This writer further assured the excited youth (who were already giving clapping ovation while this writer was still speaking) that God was at work to help in addressing the challenges posed by their concerns due to the generation gap their parents were apparently ignorant of. This is the basis fo the publication of the content of the eBook, Proper Parenting of Teenagers, by C .N C. Ejiofor in this blog site, http://cncejiofor1.blogspot.com for the benefit of interested readers and the general public There are more negative influences than there are positive ones on teenagers, requiring that parents prepare to stay ahead of their teenagers right from when they are yet in their formatives years of ages 0 - 3 years, up to 5 - 10 years as the case may be depending on the age, rate of growth, and development of the respective child.