Q: Guruji, today youth are more interested in drugs, alcohol and pornography. What is your advice for the parents on how should they handle teenagers and how can they have a better relationship with them?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes, it is a very delicate issue because teenagers don’t like to be dominated by the parents. Usually there is tendency to do that, so here parents should mellow down a little bit and help understand each other. We need to keep teenagers very busy, give them plenty of entertainment and lots of sports. Give them so much work that they do not have any time for anything. They come back home tired and fall asleep. So it is the age between eight to eighteen that they can learn sports. They should go to the gymnasium, do swimming. You know, when someone has done swimming for an hour, and then some exercise they come back home and all their energy is exhausted and they want to sleep. Morning they wake up fresh and they should learn music, they should be given lot of puzzles, and they should be exposed to a lot of information, entertainment, and education. This is how you can keep the teenagers away from sitting and surfing through the internet and viewing all pornography.