I urge you children to be patient with your parents. If they seem

In the hush between generations, an elder voice rises: “I urge you children to be patient with your parents. If they seem to be out of touch on such vital issues as dating, clothing styles, modern music, and use of family cars, listen to them anyway. They have the experience that you lack.” This counsel sets a small lamp in a windy corridor. It does not deny the newness of the age; it reminds us that new roads still run across old earth. What looks like caution in the gray-haired is often love distilled by time—wisdom that has paid its tuition in scars.

The ancients taught that memory is a second sight. A father or mother may not know the slang of the marketplace, but they know the price of unguarded choices. When your parents pause at your clothing styles or frown at the thrum of modern music, they are not merely policing taste; they are asking, “What do these signals invite into your life? What do they announce about your dignity?” When they raise a brow at dating, they are not denying joy; they are trying to protect the part of you that will still be there when the song ends and the lights go up. Their warnings about family cars are not fear of speed, but reverence for breath.

To be patient is not to silence your own voice; it is to widen the room so more truth can fit inside it. Listen not only for rules, but for reasons. Hear the stories underneath the advice: the friend who was kind but not faithful, the night a song made a crowd forget its kindness, the road that looked straight until the fog came. A young heart sees moments; an old heart sees patterns. Where you see a single evening, they see a season; where you see a turn of the wheel, they see the habits that make the driver.

Consider two true tales from our shared library. First, Rehoboam, son of Solomon: when crowned, he scorned the counsel of the elders and chose the swagger of his peers. He answered the people with hardness where listening was asked, and the kingdom split like a clay jar dropped on stone. His failure was not lack of power, but lack of patience with experience. He would not borrow the wisdom that was freely offered, and so he bought folly at full price. Second, remember Mencius and his mother, who moved their home three times—away from a graveyard’s mimicry of mourning, away from a market’s mimicry of bargaining—until the boy learned in a place fit for learning. She spoke few rules; she shaped a life. That is parental foresight at work: a compass more than a cage.

There is also a humbler, modern parable. A daughter, certain she could judge a date by charm alone, brushed off her mother’s gentle questions—“How does he handle disappointment? How does he speak of those who cannot repay him?” Weeks later, the girl learned those answers the hard way. What spared her from deeper harm was not a lecture, but the lane her parents had insisted on for the family car: a curfew, a check-in, fuel money tied to trust. Boundaries did not ruin freedom; they rescued it. In time she returned to the kitchen table with tears and thanks, discovering that being out of touch with trends is not the same as being out of touch with truth.

To listen is an act of honor, and honor enlarges the soul. You need not agree with every garment chosen, every song declined, every curfew set; but even disagreement can be carried with the music of respect. Ask for the “why,” and then carry that “why” with you when no one is watching. This is how a young person grows taller on the inside—by standing on the shoulders of those who stood before them in storms you have not yet seen.

Therefore let the teaching be carved plainly: children, keep patience; parents, keep presence. The past is not a prison; it is a map. Your elders’ experience may feel like a slow river against your fast oars, yet rivers remember where rocks hide. Take their bearings, and you will travel farther with fewer wrecks. One day, when bright hair has dimmed on your own head, you will hand the same lamp to the next traveler and understand why it was given to you.

Walk with these practices: (1) Before debates about dating, clothing styles, modern music, or the family car, ask your parents to share a story—not a rule—about what shaped their view. (2) Repeat back what you heard—“So you’re worried about my safety and my character, not my playlist”—so that listening becomes mutual. (3) Offer one place to try it your way and one place to do it theirs; keep the promise either way. (4) Keep a small “wisdom ledger”: write one sentence of experience you borrowed each week and how it spared you trouble or brought you peace. (5) When frustrated, practice a short blessing: “I choose patience now, so I can choose freedom later.” In these simple obediences, the generations meet, and the house becomes a school where love grows fluent in both old counsel and new days.