Sir, - The unfair bias of the recent Budget in the context of family life plus the recent controversy regarding crude language in common usage amongst adolescents causes me to ask: "Does the average adult know anything about what goes on in the adolescent/teenage world today?"
In my capacity as a visiting counsellor (CRSE) in primary schools, I am made well aware of the countless worries and preoccupations of 12-year-olds. I receive both written and oral questions in groups and in private sessions. When I ask "Do you talk to your mum/dad about that?" the regular response is "She is too busy . . .He has no time . . .I couldn't."
One child wrote: "We have a minder, she's nice. But you wouldn't talk to her about private things."
With whom can these children have intimate, heart-to-heart chats? It is good that girls will, at least, talk intimately with pals and with an occasional adult or counsellor who has time for them. Boys can be much more lonely and feel that they have to pretend to know it all.
We can already see that parent withdrawal is one of the overwhelming problems of modern youth. Few parents have any idea where their children are in terms of the pressures, "dares", media messages, and peer-pressure to be "cool" and in touch (in every sense). Children seem to have everything in the material sense but be stressed and lonely within themselves.
Disco-going 12-year-olds are terrified of being classed as "frigid" if they don't "get-off" (French kiss). Given two or three years, that behaviour is superseded by deeper intimacy.
Nowadays discipline is often regarded as taking away the child's freedom of choice when, of course s/he needs boundaries and constraints lovingly explained and consistently adhered to. We cannot expect full-time carers to take all parental responsibilities aboard including that of giving a mother's/father's love, which is unique.
Shame on Charlie McCreevy for not supporting Irish family life to the full. Ultimately there will be a high price to pay for such neglect. - Yours, etc.,
Angela MacNamara, Lower Kilmacud Road, Dublin 14.