The advocates for understanding and listening to young people are many. This is usually a good thing – but alas – it appears to have become somewhat of a preoccupation of areas of mental health. Far less is promoted regarding the reverse: the importance of young people listening to, and understanding adults, parents in particular.

In my opinion there’s a lot more to be gained when young people work at understanding and listening to adults, than is to be gained from the seemingly excessive focus on the reverse.

Of course, it is really helpful when both constituencies work at understanding each other.

Listening to, and understanding adults, will usually have a lot more to offer young people than young people have to offer through being understood or heard.

While you, a young teenager, may not have spent enormous amounts of time trying to understand your parents, some effort expended in this direction will pay you rich dividends. Your parents? lives did not begin with your birth. Yours did. Take time to discover what and who they were before you were born. This will do wonders for all.