Channeling the phrase, “Just ‘cause I said it, don’t mean that I meant it, just ‘cause you heard it.” from Adele’s hit, Rumour Has It, I found it similar to the way in which teenagers communicate. Taking this lyric one step farther, I would say, “Just ’cause you heard it, doesn’t mean that I said it.” Truth be told, parents can get mixed up in semantics when they take any communication literally from a teenager–and I do mean that literally.
Parents, if you’ve ever heard from the grapevine, something about another teenager, or worse, something the parent did, does, or did not do, I would advise that just because a teenager said it, doesn’t mean it really happened.
Telephone game
Consequently, under those circumstances, a parent might get a phone call from another parent asking if a particular rumor is true. Since when is it customary to believe anything a teenager says anyway? According to Judge Judy, teenagers cannot be trusted “when their mouths are moving.”
Many parents might remember a nation-wide grade school experiment, back in the 70s (cough, cough), when the teacher set up the telephone game. For those unfamiliar, the teacher would line all the students up in a row, and whisper a secret into the first students’ ear. That student would then turn and whisper the same secret to the next person and so on and so forth until the last student heard the secret. By the time the last student had heard the secret and repeated it out loud, it had been distorted so much that it did not make any sense.
This is how it works with parents; they listen to their own kids, and their friends, and before long the information is confusing and makes not logical sense.
Here we go round in circles
When parents hear “information” from teenage sources, chances are it is the product from some imaginative group of young independents. Most times, these rising young adults forget the most relevant facts. They can talk and gossip all they want. Come on parents, you know where I am going with this, right? This is where the spin comes in—just because they said it, doesn’t mean it happened exactly the way it did.
Not the only culprit
Teenagers are not the only group that tends to give misleading information. According to US News and World Report, children as young as three learn how to lie and “one study found that people tell two to three lies every 10 minutes.”
I find this so fascinating because we only know what people want us to know, nothing more. Even if it is a spoken falsehood, positive or negative, we only know what someone tells us, and without proof or data it is all just small talk and polite conversation, but we tend to believe it anyway.
In their defense
Truth be told, and no pun intended, teenagers do have wild imaginations. I am inclined to believe that the dispensing of their “misinformation” is not deliberate. Some tend to leave details out and some improvise–this is what they do. They assume the worst and report about it, or they simply forget the facts. Seems perfectly legitimate and understandable; a part of the growing and maturing process.
However, teenagers are not really the only ones that carry the blame. I put the onus on the adult to realize who they are dealing with. Parents of teenagers bear the “high-road” of responsibility to decipher fact from fiction. Just because someone said something, doesn’t make it true.
The challenge is the judgment some families receive based on this misinformation. Adults tend to fill in the blanks and hence, there goes that telephone game again.
Negative comments about friends, family, or even non-friends, are just sentences provided by our youth and who interestingly enough, are under the impression their intelligence level is superior to everyone else.
So, the next time you should “hear” about something I said or did, and you feel like you should call and pump me for details, I will make a deal with you—I will forgive you for asking, if you forgive me for not answering.
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