Question

Imagine for a moment that you have a 15 year-old daughter. She's always been a good student and gets good grades. She's helpful around the house, active in soccer and basketball, and has always shown you good judgment in making decisions on her own. Since last summer, the end of middle school and start of high school, she has become quite tight with a group of girls she's known since childhood. They are in the same classes, live close to each other, and play on some of the same sport's teams. Although her peer group is made up of basically good kids, including your daughter’s best friend since grade school, lately, they've been getting into some trouble. On a recent Saturday night they were caught by the police drinking beer in the town public park. On several occasions, your daughter arrived home an hour later than she was supposed to, and at least twice in the last three weeks, she was not where she was supposed to be (she told you she was going one place, and then went someplace else). This peer group is very important to your daughter and she feels deeply connected to them. She tells you she knows many of the things she and they do are wrong, but she doesn’t feel that she can tell them what to do and stand up for herself. She’s afraid if she does, they won’t like her anymore and ostracize her.

Based on the description I’ve given you, please answer the following questions (Please don't feel as if you need to write a paragraph in response to each question. A couple of sentences for each question is more than enough).

1. What do you think is happening to your daughter?

2. What should you do to help your daughter?

3. What are the factors should you consider when trying to decide how to help her?

4. Is this a normal teenage scenario, or one that is unusual and dangerous?

5. What methods of intervention would you use: talking, punishment, or some other intervention technique?

Answer 1

1. This scenario is explaining the situation, I think this one of the most common problems of adolescents. Most of the adolescence needs an affiliation from the peer group. They develop their self-identity by connecting themselves with the group they belong to. These kids try to do everything that is expected from their peer group to confirm with the group. The same is happening with my daughter. She knows what is going on with her but she wants to be the part of her peer group.

2. To help my daughter I should talk to her about her everything frankly with empathy but without any judgments. Also, need to show her unconditional warmth to make her comfortable so she can discuss problems of her life. Because I think she needs to understand her self even without affiliation from others.

3. I need to focus on her nature before I observed something wrong with her behaviour so I can compare and analyse her current situation. after that, I need to check her current problems such as lying, drinking habit, being secretive and hiding things.

4. I think this a normal teenage scenario in which teenagers are very vulnerable to do wrong or indulge in such activities to be part of the group. We just need to take care of our children by sharing things, by discussing things and providing emotional support and care for the emotional security of children. If children are deeply connected with their parents and share everything they will not have the desire to get attention and affiliation from others at any cost.

5. I would use talking methods of intervention to deal with problem of my daughter.