If you are a parent – the important thing is, please don’t stand on a big pedestal. The only qualification you have is, that you just came here a few years early. So this is the only qualification adults have, that they came here a few years earlier than the younger people. This doesn’t qualify you to advise about everything in the universe, it doesn’t.
If you admit your ignorance with the youth, and especially with the little children they will become your close friends. Otherwise they look up to you because they have to, there is a hierarchy business. And of course, everybody hates that hierarchy. Looking up, neck hurts, you know. Nobody likes it.
Because in trying to place yourself above, you are losing the possibility of being a good friend. If you are not a good friend, they are not seeking your advice. They are not just in the neighbourhood – now, globally they seek answers, Okay? You don’t know where their friend is. Their friend is in Timbuktu right now, not in the neighbourhood.
A relationship is only possible when you are not on the pulpit, you are down on the ground like everybody else. On the same two feet. Then only it’s possible, then only there is a friendship. When there is a friendship, there is room for correction. When there is no friendship, you can say what you want, nobody is going to listen anyway.
And if you go on telling advice after advice, they will just do the reverse, just to spite you. A whole lot of children do things just because it freaks the parents. Yes or no? They are doing it just to freak the parents. They just enjoy it, because of this advice and advice and advice. Advice is sickening, nobody likes advice. But, if there was a bond of friendship, naturally they would listen. That’s what one should earn. The parents and teachers should earn the friendship of the new generation, rather than thinking just because you came a few years early, you know the universe. There is no such thing.
So just stop advising them. Just be friends with them, play with them, go to the cinema with them, listen to their kind of rap music, dance with them. You will see they will be fond of you. There will be a relationship. Once there is a relationship, you can do something, you can influence them.
