Saturday, January 30, 2016

The Generation Gap?

My youngest daughter is 19 and we don't talk much because both of us are sort of opinionated and because we think somewhat differently we tend to argue if we talk. It's not that we don't love each other it's just that our thoughts are so different. Also, I was about 48 when she was born so there is about a 50 year generation gap to the point where words don't even mean the same thing to us. She's always complaining that I'm not using specific enough words whereas I prefer to simplify everything down to shorthand. I do this because I noticed when I was young that complicated communications often just confuse everyone in a conversation. Though I have an extremely large vocabulary, effective communication has been very important to me. So, I try to have clarity through simplicity. However, because my daughter has gone to private schools, (the best in this area) her way of communicating isn't simple it is instead specific. So, we often butt heads because communication means completely different things to both of us. On top of this words no longer mean what they did while I was growing in the 1950s through 1970s so this can be a problem too in communication. So, as styles of communication change over the years there definitely is a generation gap as well as a gender gap through the years.

So, you can be talking to someone and the words you say don't mean what they did in the 1970s anymore for example which can be confusing to someone who was in their 20s in the 1970s like me.

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