How can we help teenagers?

[Andrius Kulikauskas]

Fred, I'm not a teenager. But how can I help teenagers? Also, who is keeping us from helping teenagers? You can criticize them and we can have a debate!

[kayiwa]

Yes Andrius you are not a tenegeer but you were once and you have hard people neglect the young ones
the bible says that JESUS said let the young people come close to me but in Africa the leaders say the young people are coming to morrow
many people i critise over this
Politicians of Africa when they want votes hey will use youths to look for votes. doctors but they dont want to leave the s
When they want to make strikes they use youths
when it comes to share the national cake they neglect them.
I am looking at also the old people who dont want to retire they are doctors, teachers, presidents like kenya and cuba when will then the youths get recogonised?

[kayiwa]

In Uganda, the age that determines mature youths is 18 and on this Age you can vote
to my suprise the minster of Youths is 40 years and am wondering why should this be
we have just had common wealth youth confrence in Uganda but youths that attended most of them were in their late 30ths and these are taken to be more resposible than the teens and they represent the teener,
its like in Uganda the Minister for Disabled people is not disabled nor lame
so for me these are the things i critiseze and we should help the teneegers when we include them in the activities if the department of UN youths why there be AGED people?
i wonder how many tenegeers are participating in the lithunia communia meeting.

[Andrius Kulikauskas]

Fred, your comments are very good. You are right, we don't have any teenagers coming to the COMMUNIA meeting. But I can ask to find some. And they can represent you, yes?

[Thomas Chepaitis]

Hello, Ken,

well i have a teenager son,

he and his friends, and me too when I was 16 doesn't want to study, value life experience much more than science, still like to play, have ideas abut their generation, some are going to make career in existing system, others don't like them,

teenagers are usually more sincere, lively, but unhappier, suicidal level is higher.

in this age the person's philosophy also develops, his motto, which he carries then through his life.

Interesting, that now I'm finding similarities of teen ages, and life after 40 (after 37, in fact)

there is also one hint - a generation usually repeats not their preceeding (fathers), but grandfathers. So the young which are now 20 (born 1988 - in a time of revolutions here in Eastern Europe) repeat the generation, born in the end or after the WWII (1943-50)

[kayiwa]

Thanks Thomas
could you let us the wories that your son has as a teneeger?
how does he value the future?and others?

[Andrius Kulikauskas]

One of the problems I remembered as a teenager was that teenagers didn't seem to have anything serious to talk about and didn't know how to talk seriously, either. They make up their own language for talking about nothing. And I always thought that was strange. And I suppose talking with girls was also very difficult and strange, too. I wonder if it is the same in rural or urban Uganda. It is interesting that in Lithuania the youth are in many ways more innocent than in America. In Lithuania they come to things about three years later, which is to say that a sixteen year old in Lithuania may deal with the issues of a thirteen year old in America (in terms of dating, drugs, responsibility, independence, rebelliousness). I think it is nice for these things to come later and so the childhood is longer. In Lithuania there is a lot of alcohol, though. And there is I think much too much homework, it is crushing and it keeps the children from playing and growing. Perhaps the youth's perspective is about reflecting on the existing society and so it has a lot to do with the possibility of reuse of creative work. Also, the younger youth learn from the older youth and this allows for rapid change. For example, a language (like English) can have a dramatic change quite rapidly I think because the evolution may come from older youth to younger youth (every three years) rather than from parents to children (every generation). Perhaps similarly with a set of norms.