Politics; advice across the Generation Gap; youngers to elders?
After I posted my seven rough guidelines for elders giving advice to those who are younger, on December 22nd, there were two comments asking me for something similar going in the opposite direction.

rahaeli commented:
"If you have any corresponding bits of advice for the other direction of conversation -- younger to elder -- I'd be very interested in hearing it. A lot of times, when communicating (online or in person) with someone a generation or so older than I am (I'm thirty, so very tail end of GenX) I know that we've having a conversational rupture and I don't know how to repair it."

And kheha replied to that comment, saying:
"Very much agreed. I tend to be better at repairing with people that I know well (or we are less likely to have a misunderstanding in the first place), but conversational ruptures seem to happen more and more. Perhaps the reason is that I'm interacting more with people who are less used to having conversations with people of my generation, but I do wish I were able to fix it on my end with more prowess than I have now."

I have a feeling that the question itself has shifted a bit in these two comments. That is, my perception is that I'm not being asked specifically about "guidelines for younger people who are giving advice to those who are older"; rather, the question is a more general one about how to avoid and/or repair communication breakdowns when members of the younger generations [hereafter, just "youngers"] are involved in language interactions with elders.

I may be wrong about that shift; it may be that this is yet another example of an elder who's misunderstanding what's been said. If so -- if the question really is about youngers giving advice to elders -- I can say just a few tentative words. As follows...

It's best to give elders advice only when they've asked you a specific question to which you either know the answer or know how to find the answer. In this journal, for example, there've been many times when I've asked a specific question about how to use some LJ feature or how to do something with my digital camera, and there has been an immediate response providing me with the information I needed. That's wonderful, and I've been very grateful for the help. Suppose the elderly person who lives next door comes to you and says "I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make the flash work on my new camera; could you help me with that?". In such a case, it's appropriate, and safe, for you to give advice.

I suspect that that's not the sort of interaction that led to the comments from rahaeli and kheha. My guess is that it's more likely to be a scenario where youngers notice elders struggling with their cameras, trying to get the flash to work and getting nowhere, and the youngers' impulse is to step in and fix that -- in spite of the fact that the elders haven't asked them any questions. Which is, I'm sorry to say, likely to lead to what rahaeli and kheha aptly call "conversational ruptures."

I'm going to stop here, since I'm not certain exactly what's wanted, and wait for clarification.

Over to you...