The Young and the Bloggers

Yes, the young and the restless is an alternate title appropriate here! But I want to chronicle a specific young woman who is at a crossroads of a sort. My granddaughter Lindsay.

She is 16, a very good student, active in music (violin, guitar and ukulele; singing and song composing), theater, and reading. Her grasp of the world around her is alive and active. She thinks about things seriously yet retains her sense of humor. She wonders out loud and thinks and writes about her thoughts. Yet she is dismayed.

It seems that her community is above average in household income and age demographics also suggesting families in mid and later careers. Such homes are the bastions of the middle class attempting to rise farther. And their politics are often republican and conservative.

This is context to the political climate of Trumpism. It seems Lindsay’s schoolmates have families that supported Trump in the recent election. As a result casual conversations among her set of friends mirrors the Trump tweets. Such are disrespectful of women, gays, immigrants, and the whole welter of targets well known to us all. This has caused a freeze in friendly chats at school. A cooling of social interaction is uncomfortably growing and these young people are struggling to understand what is happening.

Of course mindsets of young teens are subject to parental opinions. Such are ever present and slowly absorbed as context of understanding the world around them. Only until the individual teenager experiences different opinions among peers will their brains figure out alternative ways of perceiving the world. The broader context pulls the individual into a larger world view. It is the normal process of maturing. Exposure to the outside world broadens one’s thinking by challenging logic, expanding dictionary, and growing historical facts. And a slow expansion of understanding all of that.

Meanwhile she is struggling to communicate intelligently with her friends. She works to maintain a diplomatic approach to smooth things over until more is known and understood. This will take time. This will take experience. It will take patience.  All of these are maturing agents as well. She is on her way.

Getting her over the interim, however, is the challenge. She is thinking of writing a blog that explores her feelings and thinking about many topics. I’m hoping she will accept this challenge and use the blog as an open journal of her growth. I’m being a little selfish in this because I’m wanting to see how a ‘millennial to be’ thinks.

Although I work with a group of teenagers who are drug addicts, I still don’t know how they think, only how they behave. I’m struggling to capture some connection between their behavior and the thinking. Perhaps my granddaughter’s blog will help with my education?

Listening to different generations and their ideas is paramount to understanding them.

We shall see. First she has to get comfortable with the concept of blogging and exposing herself to the world. One hopes this will be a pleasant experience and not a hideous one. After all, behavior of others appears to be an ungoverned morass these days. Yet another challenge to logic and articulation of current events as they affect our personal space and thought!

January 26, 2017