AS usual, last Sunday afternoon, after watching my son play for his local football team, I sat in the dining room to work on some school-related issue or another, when I heard my wife utter the immortal lines “kids today, you don’t know your born” and “it wasn’t like that in my day.”

Instantly I thought that my wife had turned into my mother who, 40-odd years earlier could have been heard throughout our back-to-back terrace in Leeds, uttering the same lines.

The truth is, none of us, from whichever generation we have come from, think that those younger than us have had it as hard as we have.

I do not, for one minute, believe that I had it harder, tougher or more challenging than the youth of today, it was just different.

I sat my first formal exams, ‘O’ levels, at 16.

By the same age my children had been tested to death through an education system intent on testing the life out of children.

I had the choice of three television channels and always found something to watch. Today we have up to 200 channels and often we sit down and comment on the fact that there is nothing worth watching.

I spent endless hours, ‘playing out’ with my friends until the light faded. Our children are now castigated by others if they are seen on the streets in groups at any time of the day.

Our children, the youth of today, have it no harder or easier than they have ever had, it is just different.

The pressures and stresses of everyday life have changed enormously and the impact of many of these changes have resulted in the increased challenge of mental health issues in our young people.

Appreciation of what life is like from a number of perspectives is vital if we are to enable our young people, our future, to make the world a better, happier and safer place to live.

Talking openly and listening carefully is the way forward.