Kids need to keep their parents in perspective.

If you're a kid reading this -- not likely but maybe -- you either love and revere your parents -- again not likely but maybe -- or you're thinking they are way too strict, forbidding you from (1) dating an older boy or a trashy girl, (2) going to a concert with your friends, (3) hanging out downtown on school nights with tattooed people, (4) using your cell phone while driving, (5) leaving the house until you've picked up your clothes from your floor, etc. Pick your battle.

To you they look like the police. To themselves, they look like you but older. In you they see who they used to be, more or less, and that means seeing the mistakes they made and trying to spare you most of them. In the process, though, they do sometimes have to flash badges that say PARENT.

They didn't aspire to this role. It was visited upon them when they had you. They probably wanted you -- may have gone to extreme measures to have you -- but they never imagined how their lives would change just because of you. It's like one minute they were young and in love and so into each other and -- zap! -- the next minute they were up half the night, taking turns quieting you, snapping at each other the next day because they were so damned tired and, thanks to you, sleep-deprived. They loved you, but boy o boy, did you change their lives!

Your parents are just grown-up versions of you. They're not necessarily smarter -- maybe or maybe not -- but they've seen so much more of life than you have that you really ought to pay attention to what they have to say. If, after a while, they seem full of crap, tune them out -- as young people have been doing since the last Ice Age -- but not until you've listened. Even grown-ups who don't seem all that smart sometimes have insights about particular things that they're interested in or good at or spent a career doing. Keep your ears and minds open, okay?

It's true, of course, that parents have been repeating the same old cliches forever, all about choosing your friends carefully and driving safely and cleaning up your own messes. Also being home on time and eating your vegetables and respecting your elders and having good table manners and saying please and thank you and not dressing like whores and pimps. It's because cliches are true. That's why they've become part of our language. But each generation has to be taught them all over again. Your parents learned them. So will you.

Parents have a very serious obligation to their children, who were brought into this world with no say-so about it. Children have only an obligation to themselves, to figure out who they are and, if need be, ask a parent for information or, in rare instances, advice. But someday those children may become parents themselves, so we can only hope they've been paying attention.

And so the cycle keeps repeating itself. Just like the seasons. Like clockwork. As Yogi Berra said, "It's deja vu all over again."

It was Mark Twain who said that when he left home as a young man, he thought his father pretty much an idiot, but when he came back home again, he was surprised to find out how much the old man had learned. Part of deciding whether or not to trust your parents is simply the process of growing up and learning that, yes, those old cliches really are right. The Golden Rule. Manners. Perserverence. Trust. Goodness. Love. No matter what age, there are goals you should be pursuing but also values you should make part of your development.

Grandparents have always been held up in our society -- and lots of others -- as being the repositories of practical wisdom, and they are. But your mom or dad are good sources, too, and are closer to you than your grandparents, who are one generation removed. (Aesthetic distance, they call it in the art world.) Check in with your parents before you believe everything your friends tell you. Then, if you need a second opinion, ask your grandparents.

But don't do any of this if you're not mature enough to listen and learn. If you're young and crazy and bent on rebellion for its own sake, then go ahead and heed the advice of your friends who haven't been alive any longer than you and who may not be as smart. Good luck with that.

In the end, remember that your parents consider their lives enriched because of you and the experience of having you and trying to raise you. That's why they took you on in the first place and why we keep on doing it as a species. Like even the simplest of creatures, their biological drive is for you to survive. But humans take it a notch higher and want their offspring not just to avoid predators but to enjoy the things they've enjoyed themselves -- sex and kids and good food and sports and job satisfaction, etc. And to avoid the miseries of life. Some problems, after all, are avoidable, and some lessons can be learned: the triumph of intelligence over instinct.

There's not a parent alive who hasn't said to himself/herself: God, I wish I had that moment back! They don't want you to someday say the same to yourself.

Raising a generation of humans is not for the faint-hearted. It's a wonder most of us do it as well as we do -- and that most of our young survive to pass on the cliches to their own offspring.

A well-designed system, no?

Yes and no. Granted, I couldn't have planned it better myself. But, being a husband and a dad, I can think of places it could have been tweaked.

So can you.

Being human isn't perfect, but it's the best evolution has come up with so far.