I’ve just spent a day with a fourteen year old girl. As she chatted away about her school and interests, I realised that in many ways things haven’t changed through the generations. Her main topics of conversation were about her school work and the old friends she is falling out with, or the new friends she is making. Boys featured a great deal in her conversation. In all these things I remember I was just the same.
Then I realised there were many differences. She held her mobile phone in her hand and was constantly abstracted making or receiving messages. At her age we just had a shared land-line phone at home. Her mother takes her to school each day, I used to walk.
She then explained that on a ‘residential’ (we called them week-ends away) she felt lonely and out of things as none of her friends were with her. Then she told me that she just sat in a corner and talked to Jesus. Fortunately, something never change.
Carol