Laurence Steinberg Quotes

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Some adolescents are troubled and some get into trouble. But the great majority (almost nine out of ten) do not. . . . The bottomline is that good kids don't suddenly go bad in adolescence.

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