Free mentorship for parents on teenagers and long holidays

Parents urged to take a more active role in mentoring teenagers during the long school holidays. [File, Standard]

Now and then, good teachers like Miss Judy invite me to mentor her students. It is not one of my favourite cups of soup because I firmly believe the best mentoring happens at home, with parents, many of whom have since outsourced parenting to strangers.

So now we have mentorship as the latest craze in town, sometimes conducted by fellows who badly need mentoring themselves.

Be that as it may, I have received a lot of mentorship from these youngsters, and I can now confidently say I know something about what they think about nearly everything, from politics to that taboo topic we desperately want to believe they know little about.

Let’s start with politics. These youngsters seem to think politicians and corruption are synonyms, so much so that challenging them to name corrupt politicians they think they know would be like inviting them into a dangerous game of libel and defamation.

Adults, be warned, you might be dealing with veritable parrots out there, and you ought to be more careful about what you say about our leaders when they are lurking nearby because the stuff you say in your ‘wantam-tutam’ heated debates is getting replicated in young discussions out there.

Next to politicians, these youngsters do not have much love for the Church and its leaders. Yes, they sing in the choir and participate in praise and worship in the youth church, but they do not have kind words for the Church-they feel it preaches too much water while taking too much wine.

Broadly speaking, the spiritual distance between the Church and a sizeable number of teenagers out there is as wide as the road to hell, especially now when it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between a political rally and a church service.

And herein lies one of the biggest mentorship challenges: Explaining to these youngsters that their attitudes towards certain pastors should not influence their attitude towards God. This is not exactly easy, seeing that many of them view God more or less the way they view their parents and teachers: As moralistic do-this-do-that, don't-do-this-don't-do-that old man always out to spoil the fun.

We cannot blame them for that. We started it when we turned every holy book into a rulebook, instead of treating it as a fountain of knowledge and wisdom.

Some may call this a crisis, but it is not a crisis for these lads. In fact, it is not a crisis when they do or say things that would easily trigger a United Nations Security Council meeting. We are dealing with fellows for whom a crisis is when there is no internet. And when their phone or laptop charger is spoilt or lost, well, that is not a crisis; it is an emergency.

What do we do with this generation, especially now that we are stuck with it for nearly three months, courtesy of an education calendar that seems constantly high on steroids?

Nothing much, really, because even if we did nothing, they would still grow taller and bigger and this is what should worry us because, at this rate, we are looking at a generation that might still be wearing diapers well into their twenties and thirties.

If we do not stop pretending to be too busy for them (because that is what we do); if we do not start noticing them, really noticing them (some of us adults have since forgotten what they look like and are sometimes surprised when we suddenly realise they are growing a moustache here, fuller hips and bosoms there), we will have ourselves to blame.

We must start showing more interest in what they are thinking and saying by listening more. We must start talking with them as opposed to talking to them.

We must drop the façade of power, strength, and morality because these young rascals know more about us than we think, including some of the skeletons in our most guarded closets, and if we keep on insisting on preaching morality to them, we might as well hire Martians to mentor them.

Mr Muchiri is a media and public communications consultant. [e-mail]