As long as there have been parents, they have been thinking these same things. I’m so tired. Am I doing this wrong? How did they make such a huge mess? And most timeless of all, parents have been thinking, “What is with kids these days?”

There is literally a rock inscribed with this very idea. It dates to 2800 BC to the Sumerian civilization in ancient Mesopotamia and it laments the latest generation and their habits and disrespect. In Mary Renault’s beautiful coming-of-age novel, The Last of the Wine (grab at The Painted Porch), Alexis observes of his judgmental and stern father that he “thought, like all other fathers, that I was younger and sillier than himself at the same age.”

The exhaustion of parenting is real and understandable. But what’s harder to justify is why we assume the worst about our kids. Why do we do to them exactly what so infuriated us when our parents did it? There is no excuse for the way we fail to take our kids seriously, assuming they can’t handle the things that we handled.

Perhaps the greatest gift we can give our children is breaking this ancient cycle. By treating them with the respect and the understanding we wished for as children, we can create a new tradition—one where each generation builds upon the wisdom of the past while honoring the potential of the future. After all, our children aren’t just “kids these days”—they’re the promise of tomorrow. They’re the ones who will carry forward everything we teach them. And, if we’re receptive, they might just teach us a thing or two along the way, too.