I found this interesting quote, and I will tell you who spoke these words in a moment. “Our youth love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, and disrespect for other people. Children nowadays are tyrants. They no longer rise when their elders enter a room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.”

In Malachi 2:15, God teaches He desires for His children to raise their children in such a way that they may produce “Godly offspring.” Paul noted in Ephesians 6:4 that “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Which means it is our job as parents to nurture our children in such a way where they grow in the “wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man,” Luke 2:52.

When I consider this initial quote, I can picture myself reading this before a room full of adults today and watching many heads nod up and down in agreement. Perhaps thinking that whoever wrote the quote is a genius, and the author perfectly defines our children today. Just so you know, these words came from Socrates, over 400 years before Jesus was born.

Today we spend a lot of time griping and looking down upon the Millennials. And, ever so often, when we consider them we think of a spoiled, narcissistic generation that is doomed to failure. When in reality has not every generation said the same or something similar about the next generation.

There is not much that we as parents can do for the entire millennial generation. But, we can do our part by realizing young people have not changed much over the years and neither have the prior generation’s attitudes about them. Let’s remember Jesus and what He thought about the next generation. And let’s do our part, and stop being so hard on them, and use our influences to “hinder them not to come to me,” as Jesus said in Matthew 19:14. The reality is we have more influence over our children than we think. The wise words of Psalms 127:4, teaches us that we parents can direct the behavior and lives of our children for they are “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior.” So, let’s do what we can to point “the arrows” we have to God, and not be a hindrance to “other arrows” whom we can influence for good. Then maybe our children can break the cycle of looking down on the next generation, which seems to have been status quo since Socrates.