Open letter to parents

Mom and Dad, all of you,

There are two kinds of effort. A parent can show effort superficially or a parent can show effort genuinely. When a parent asks their child what kind of music they like, that's good. When the parent listens to it, hates it, and asks their child "Why do you like that hip-hop music?" The parent has gone over into the bad side of attention-giving. Parents, please give your kids space to grow, while asking them what they like, what they're doing. There is not an inherent problem in the question "Why do you like this?" but the kid will see that the parent is not happy with the kid's interests. If a parent thinks something is genuinely troubling, like a violent movie that the kid claims is his favorite, then the question "Why?" goes into the parent's job to protect their child. The problem of today's parents is not knowing what to protect their child from. I can't blame parents who are overprotective because it's really better than the polar opposite.
As much as a kid shuts their parents out, the parent has to make the effort to try to understand what their kid does and why. The parent doesn't even have to ask, just pay attention. If your child's image of you dies and is reborn in the likeness of a loser, that is normal growth for a person. But they still live with you and you can still see them doing what they want to do. Figure out why and let them do it a healthy amount of the time. Parents have a responsibility to be jerks, and I get that, but only be jerks when we kids are being idiots, to put it simply. Yes, its stupid to do a lot of things we kids do. We'll realize it eventually. Weather the storm, parents. We'll grow up eventually. Just make sure we grow up relatively healthily and pay attention. Thanks for trying.

Children, yours.