Laurence Steinberg Quotations

Life without parole for kids presumes that they can't be changed.

We are not very good at looking at people when they are 16 and predicting what they will be like when they are 30. We know there is a huge drop in violent crime after age 24 or 25.

The reason that kids take chances when they drive is not because they're ignorant. It's because other things undermine their better judgment.

If you have these four things, it doesn't matter what ethnic group you're from, you'll do well in school, ... It's just more common among Asian kids and less common among black and Latino kids.

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.

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.

The parent-adolescent relationship is like a partnership in which the senior partner (the parent) has more expertise in many areasbut looks forward to the day when the junior partner (the adolescent) will take over the business of running his or her own life.

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

What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of therules and no involvement in decision-making. . . . Involving the adolescent in decisions doesn't mean that you are giving up your authority. It means acknowledging that the teenager is growing up and has the right to participate in decisions that affect his or her life.

Adolescents have the right to be themselves. The fact that you were the belle of the ball, the captain of the lacrosse team, the president of your senior class, Phi Beta Kappa, or a political activist doesn't mean that your teenager will be or should be the same....Likewise, the fact that you were a wallflower, uncoordinated, and a C student shouldn't mean that you push your child to be everything you were not.

Peer pressure is not a monolithic force that presses adolescents into the same mold. . . . Adolescents generally choose friend whose values, attitudes, tastes, and families are similar to their own. In short, good kids rarely go bad because of their friends.

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 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.

Adolescents sometimes say..."My friends listen to me, but my parents only hear me talk." Often they are right. Familiarity breeds inattention.

Most adults would not dream of belittling, humiliating, or bullying (verbally or physically) another adult. But many of the same adults think nothing of treating their adolescent child like a nonperson. . . . Adolescents deserve the same civility their parents routinely extend to total strangers.

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.