Teens and Friendships

How "good" your parenting is often does not have the biggest role in your child's choice to experiment with drugs. There are many reasons that kids choose to try drugs and lack of time with their parents, lack of communication, and lack of information is not always the reason. Those three factors do often come into play but just because you've spent a lot of quality time with your kids and speak to them about everything under the sun does not make them immune.

This is from an article that I wrote and published on Bukisa (read all of it here).

I think it is important for parents to come to realize and accept that they are no longer the center of their children's universe. In fact, you might not even be on their Top Ten list. No matter how much you love them, how much attention you give them, or how much time you spend with them, there are simply other factors that play a huge role in their lives.

Friendships are one of the biggest influencing factors in teens lives. My daughter comes home and hits the computer, turning on her Facebook account right away. Then she picks up the phone. Sound familiar? She's only been away from her friends for about 10-15 minutes but she feels a need to be constantly connected to them. Why?

I'm not the only one asking this question. Wayne Parker asks the same question in his article, What Friendship Means to Your Teen. He discusses things like changing patterns and social status and give some great ideas for letting your teen have the independence they crave yet keeping them close.

Basically, your teen is changing and becoming the adult that they will be in a very short time. They are learning about themselves and how they relate to the world - where they fit in. They know where they fit with you. You're their parents and you love them (or let's hope that is what they think). Now they need to figure out what other people think about them and whether or not they are happy with that or if they want to change it.

The bottom line is that your teen is changing and learning about themselves and they are going to look outside their home for answers.

A couple of good articles to further your reading:

• Teen Growth and Development - 11-14 years - outlines physical, sociological, and intellectual changes your teen will go through and some tips to help you get through it, too. The thing I've implemented the most in the past couple years? Talk about it! Don't keep it to yourself because then you really are alone but once you start talking you'll find out that you aren't alone at all and you can have a great support team. I talk about my daughter's drug issues fairly often and I'm glad I have because if I hadn't my friend would never have suspected her son of smoking pot. Because she knew I was having issues with it though, she thought to check up on him when things didn't seem right and now her 12 year old son is getting the attention he needs (and yes, it does start that early!).
• Ten Things Your Teen Son Won't Tell You...But He Did Tell Me - great article about teen boys. I'm just getting into this one so I haven't had a huge amount of experience with it yet. I think I'll be referring back to this one!

How have your teens been influenced by friendships? Do they talk to you about it? Do you have other ways of finding out about it? How do you feel about "snooping"? Do you take advantage of tools that are available on the Internet to read messages, check out their Facebook profile?

I'd like to hear what you have to say about teens and friendships so leave a comment!