Staying Connected: A Guide for Parents on Raising an Adolescent Daughter

"Why would she do that?"

Risk-Taking

Risk-taking should not be confused with rebellion, although the line between the two can be murky. Basically, rebellion involves moving away from your parents. Risk-taking, which is yet another major developmental task, is about moving toward something without thinking of the consequences.

Furthermore, there is a difference between risk-taking that is sound and exploratory and risk-taking that is dangerous. Examples of healthy risk-taking are running for a school office, applying for a job, or deciding to leave a peer group and strike out to make new friends.

Overall, dangerous risk-taking is down among both adolescent boys and girls, and many of today’s teenagers seem never to take unhealthy risks. Nevertheless, the greatest threat to an adolescent girl’s well-being today stems from embracing behaviors that were once more the domain of boys than of girls: drinking, drinking and driving, doing drugs, driving recklessly, smoking cigarettes, and engaging in pre-marital sex. Combine the need to take risks with underdeveloped judgment skills, and you have a troublesome mix.

Why are young people attracted to something that could harm or kill them? Some teens think these behaviors are cool. Others like to smoke because it depresses the appetite. Along with pressure from a boyfriend, the earlier onset of puberty could help account for early and unsafe sexual behavior. A large factor, as ever, remains hanging with the wrong peer group.

Teenagers also take risks just because they are teenagers, possibly because of the way the teenage brain is wired. Rarely is risk-taking synonymous with antisocial behavior, that is, with violent, destructive, or illegal activities. Some children are just born with a greater propensity to take risks that continues through life. There are entire families who are risk-takers.

The good news is that "anti-" campaigns and school programs promoting safe behaviors seem to be taking hold. The rate of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, for example, is dropping as more adolescents delay intercourse or practice safe sex.

How Can You Help

To offset dangerous risk-taking, parents can help their daughters simply by being there. Knowing what is going on in her life is the most effective thing you can do to keep your daughter physically and emotionally safe.

Assure her not everyone her age "is doing it" even though it seems that way to her.

Encourage positive risk-taking.

Having a solid relationship with your daughter, preferably begun when she was young, can help her make judgment calls when you are not there to supervise. At the least, it will keep the door open for her to talk to you about the issues she faces.

Parents should be able to speak frankly with their children about addictive substances. Most important, set a good example.

Establish a pattern of asking and, as much as possible, knowing where your daughter is and whom she's with.

Searching an adolescent's room or insisting on a drug test should not be undertaken lightly. Teenage girls need their privacy. Still, you have a job to protect your child.

Sometimes, alcohol or drug abuse is a sign of a serious psychological disorder that should be treated by a mental health professional.

The highest rate of automobile accidents occurs among teens age 15 to 16. Some parents are informing their teenage daughter that she is not to carry passengers in her car in her first year of driving; she has to concentrate on the business at hand. Then they allow one passenger to be added for each six months of problem-free driving (e.g., no moving violations). They also tell her she is not to be a passenger in a car driven by another new driver.

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