By Ana Billotti
Round Table reporter

Ask any teenager today and they will tell you that they are nothing like their parents, that their parents just don’t understand them. This may be true and this may be false; it just depends on how you look at it.

Teenagers of yesteryear, meaning the parents of today’s teens, did face a lot of the same problems and issues that we now face. Yet I am left thinking; did the yesteryear teens face all the same problems at the same time as we do and were some of their “problems” not as much of a problem as it is to us.

Current teens are faced with such problems as; school, homework, sports, work, relationships, and friends- just to name a few. And most of these problems yesteryear teens faced too, but my own belief is that these same problems were not as big of problem back when they were growing up.

Lets take school and homework for example, oh sure your parents had it too but I just don’t believe that there was as much pressure upon them to get good grades and get into a good ( and hopefully reasonably priced) college as there is for us.

And of course with the ever looming knowledge that college is right around the corner most teens also need to work. They need to save money for the college, car, and to make the girl/boy of their dreams happy by taking them out on dates once in awhile. And all this pressure and work can build up for a teen and to most of us it seems like we never have a chance to just relax and hang out with friends anymore.

I just want to restate that I am not saying that teenagers of the past did not have their own problems; of course they did, every single teen alive faces problems that they think is astronomical and that their whole world is crumbling down around them; at least once in awhile.

But now that these adolescents have grown up and turned into the parents of today’s teenagers I feel that they put more pressure upon their own teenage child in order for them to achieve more than they were able to. A common expression among adolescents is, “My parents are so (and take your pick here) strict, overprotective, or too involved in my life, because they don’t want me making the same mistakes they did when they were my age but they need to trust me and just leave me alone.”

And that expression can, and sometimes is, true but all in all I feel that our parents do understand (to a point) what we, as teenagers, are going through because they did face the same problems that we face today, but maybe with just a little less pressure.