To Overcome Teen Trouble by Osho

Just be open with each other, says OSHO
First, teenagers should be honest and true, whatever the consequence. They should tell their parents whatever they feel — not arrogantly, but humbly. They should not hide anything from their parents. That is what is creating the gap: parents are hiding things from the children, children are hiding things from parents, and thus the gap is becoming bigger and bigger.

Teenagers are in a very difficult situation. They are changing — leaving childhood behind, they are becoming youngsters. Every day new dimensions of life are opening for them. They are in the process of transformation. They need immense help from their parents. But right now, the situation is that they don’t meet their parents at all. They live in the same house but they don’t talk to each other because they cannot understand each other’s viewpoints. They meet only when the teenager needs money. The gap goes on becoming bigger; they become as much strangers as one can imagine. This is really a calamity.

Open Your Hearts
Teenagers should be encouraged to say everything to their parents without any fear. This is not only going to help the children, it is going to help the parents, too.

Truth has a beauty of its own; honesty has a beauty of its own. When teenagers approach their parents with honesty, truth, sincerity, and just open their hearts, it triggers something in the parents to open their hearts also, because they are also burdened with many things which they want to say but cannot….

But if they see teenagers being completely open and clean, it will help them also to be open and clean. And the so-called, much-discussed generation gap can simply be dropped; it can evaporate on its own accord....

I Made A Contract
I made a contract with my father. I told him, “I want to make a contract.” He said, “About what?”
I said, “The contract is that if I tell the truth, you have to reward me, not punish me. Because if you punish me, then next time I will not be truthful.” That’s how it is happening all over the world: truth is being punished, so then the person stops saying it. Then he starts lying, because lying is rewarded.

So, I said to him, “You can decide. If you want me to lie, I can lie...if that is what you are going to reward. But if you are ready to reward the truth, then I will say the truth — but you cannot punish me for it.” He said, “I accept the contract.”

And the next day there was trouble because just next door there used to live an old-fashioned brahmin scholar. He was a fanatical worshipper of Rama. He was such a fanatic that if you named Krishna to him, he would become furious.

The next day I said to him, ‘Hare Krishna’ — and he chased me all over, but he could not run as fast, so I soon left him behind.  …When I reached home, I told my father what had happened: “I have said, ‘Hare Krishna’. I don’t think there is anything wrong in it. He will be coming.”

The man came to our house and he told my father in front of me, “You have to punish this boy.”

My father said, “That is difficult because he made a contract with me just yesterday that if he says the truth, then I cannot punish him. If he says a lie, then I can punish him.”

And he never punished me after that. I told him the truth every time I was doing anything that was going to come to his notice sooner or later. 

The Closest Strangers
It’s simple. Your father and mother are also strangers, but they are the closest strangers, the most intimate strangers. Expose yourself to them so no gap exists. This will help them also to be sincere with you. This is something to be remembered — that sincerity, honesty, truth, trigger in the other person also, the same qualities.

Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, courtesy Osho International Foundation,