Michael Grose tells the story of a 40 year old dad wanting to challenge a group of sixteen year old boys (who were watching a sixteen on big brother uncut) over their attitudes to sex.  Instead of lecturing the, he asked some questions and then made the comment: “ it is you guys now who are the hunted rather than the hunters.  Girls are far more predatory that in my day” – and left the room. 

Followed by three 16 year old boys now more interested in what he meant that in the sex scene on TV!

I’ll come back to that story in a minute.

I’m finding a new use for the internet’s concept of hyperlinks. If you’re new to the internet, a hyperlink is a word, phrase, or image that you can click on to open up a new document or to jump to a new section within the current document. For instance, if you click on this underlined phrase - more dog safety for kids - you will jump to an older post of mine. Or you want to find out about some recent product recalls on toys, click on Bad Dad and you’ll jump to his site. Or click on Grose’s name at the top of the post and check out an extremely helpful book of his…

Generations Y & Z (those born after 1976) are used to clicking on the link that interests them when they see it on a webpage or email, and exploring it further. They often skim read but can delve deeper into a topic by using these links.

What that simply means for us Oldies is this: if your kids tend to be uninterested in your stories or your opinions, try being a little cryptic, drop bait into conversation, rather than preaching or just dumping all your stories and knowledge on them as you see fit.  Say things that catch their attention. 

The father in Grose’s anecdote above did exactly that.

I used this recently as a conversation starter with my 11 year old son: “You know that practical joke show you were watching last week? I used to punk (play pranks on) people when I was about 20.” And I left it at that. He started asking questions. Five minutes later, he was laughing hard and asking me to tell him about another one I’d pulled.

Have you used this? How has it worked?