Help for Troubled Teens

Your Teen’s Friends

Peer Influence & Peer Relationships

Teens want to be with people their own age — their peers.  During adolescence, teens spend more time with their peers and without parental supervision.  With peers, teens can be both connected and independent, as they break away from their parents’ images of them and develop identities of their own.

While many families help teens in feeling proud and confident of their unique traits, backgrounds, and abilities, peers are often more accepting of the feelings, thoughts, and actions associated with the teen’s search for self-identity.  Read more…

Alcohol and Teen Drinking

A child who reaches age 21 without

smoking, abusing alcohol or using drugs

is virtually certain never to do so.

- Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Chairman and President,

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University

Alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence are not only adult problems — they also affect a significant number of adolescents and young adults between the ages of 12 and 20, even though drinking under the age of 21 is illegal.

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Youth Who Drop Out

Young people who don’t complete high school face many more problems in later life than do people who graduate. While national leaders have demanded that schools, communities, and families make a major effort to retain students, the dropout rate remains high. A report from the Educational Testing Service, One-Third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining Opportunities, warns little is being done to stem rising dropout rates and their economic costs. This report also found:

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The major task of adolescence is to become ‘your own person’. Adolescents learn to make choices and commitments, follow through with them, and stand up independently in the world.

They need to be respected for taking on these tasks. After all, we respect adults who can do these things. They are complicated and courageous actions.

But teenagers swing back and forth between dependence and independence as they work on these tasks. It’s easy for parents to get frustrated. And it’s easy for a parent to assume that if the teenager would simply follow the plan that makes sense to a parent, things would be all right in the end.

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