The public probably knows that teen drivers are at greater risk for fatal accidents. What the public doesn't know is what we ought to do about it.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.