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Teen: “Hey mom. I’m spending the night here at Sarah’s.” Mother: “No you’re not. I told you to be home by 11:00 PM.” Teen: “But her mom said it was O.K. if I stay here tonight.” Mother: “I don’t care. I let you go over there because you promised to be home by 11:00. Now, you either come home or you’re grounded for the rest of the week!” Teen: “Then I’m never coming home!!!” (CLICK) Sound familiar? For moms and dads with adolescents, setting curfews can be tricky. Adolescents should have curfews because they need discipline and supervision. They're at a point in life where they are experimenting and pushing boundaries. When adolescents rebel against their curfews, moms and dads shouldn't give in.    Parents are so easily manipulated by teens when it comes to curfews. It's not just about your teen hanging out with the wrong people or you staying up late worrying where he or she is at. A curfew is about an adolescent understanding that, yes, he or she can...

"My daughter doesn't appreciate anything I do for her!"  Have you ever said something like that?  If so, you may need a wake-up call... Over-indulged teenagers are not born, they are created.  Moms and dads create teenagers that are over-indulged by giving them an over-abundance of what they want, but don’t need. However, it’s not always the material things that lead to over-indulgence.  It may be a permissive parental approach in which the youngster is allowed to read things that are not age-appropriate.  It might also be over-permissive and over-protective parenting of the youngster (e.g., doing everything for the teen in a protective manner).  Overindulging is: a form of child neglect; it hinders teenagers from performing their needed developmental tasks, and from learning necessary life lessons doing or having so much of something that it does active harm, or at least prevents a youngster from developing and deprives that youngster of achi...