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If there is one common thread in adolescence, it’s the importance teens place on their relationships with their peers. As they push against you and begin to explore what life looks and feels like on their own, they don’t really want to be alone. It is like someone jumping from rock to rock over a treacherous river. There is a perceived danger in being anywhere other than a rock, a place of stability. So teens, at some point, will jump from parents as one rock to other teens as another rock. Other teens, bouncing along that same journey, are often not the most stable of landing places.

Teens are also risk takers. You, as the parent, are the known quantity. They have been around you their whole lives; you are nothing new. Relationship with other kids, however, is exciting and fun. It makes them feel good about themselves to have approval and acceptance from their peers. Oh, you’ll do in a catastrophe, like when the timing chain comes off the car and she needs a ride at ten forty-five at night. You’ll do when he needs help designing his project and picking up the poster board because the presentation is in two days. You’ll do when she’s forgotten to turn in her permission slip and it has to be at the school office no later than thirty-five minutes from five minutes ago. You’ll do when he’s out of money and is absolutely starving. You are necessity; their friends are choice. READ MORE