16 Quotes by Laurence Steinberg

Adolescents have the right to be themselves. The fact that you were the belle of the ball, the captain of the lacrosse team, the president of your senior class, Phi Beta Kappa, or a political activist doesn't mean that your teenager will be or should be the same....Likewise, the fact that you were a wallflower, uncoordinated, and a C student shouldn't mean that you push your child to be everything you were not.

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.

At a stage when young people want more than anything to be like everyone else, they find themselves the least alike. Everyone their age is growing and changing, but each at his or her own pace.

Adolescents need to be reassured that nothing-neither their growing maturity, their moods, their misbehavior, nor your anger at something they have done-can shake your basic commitment to them.

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

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.