Let your child be the teenager he or she wants to be, not the adolescent you were or wish you had been.

Peer pressure is not a monolithic force that presses adolescents into the same mold. . . . Adolescents generally choose friend whose values, attitudes, tastes, and families are similar to their own. In short, good kids rarely go bad because of their friends.

Most adults would not dream of belittling, humiliating, or bullying (verbally or physically) another adult. But many of the same adults think nothing of treating their adolescent child like a nonperson. . . . Adolescents deserve the same civility their parents routinely extend to total strangers.

Parents sometimes feel that if they don't criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn't make people wantto change it makes them defensive.

Adolescents sometimes say...My friends listen to me, but my parents only hear me talk. Often they are right. Familiarity breeds inattention.

What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making.