Any parent with a teenage daughter will know the challenges they face.
You must be patient and try to understand how they feel, allow them to enjoy life and help them avoid all the potential dangers around them.
Each individual incident should be tackled individually and it is worth remembering that every child is very different.
It might seem like you must wrap them up in cotton wool to keep them away from drugs, teen pregnancy, violence and every other conceivable situation but this is not the case.
Girls need to learn about the world around them and that includes dealing with the not so nice things in society.
Being a teenager is obviously a very vulnerable time in the development as a person. Peer pressure is greater than any other stage of a person’s life.
Advertisers and a multitude of other commercial companies take full advantage of the innocence of youth to push their products and create unsuitable role models.
For example, the skinny model is portrayed as healthy and very popular; whilst in reality normal happy teenagers are rarely a size zero.
As long as a parent provides a safe and caring environment for their teenage daughter combined with maintaining good communication, then it’s a pretty good start.
This will lead to a confident person quite able to make their own decisions and ultimately make the right choices.
Obviously there are warning signs that need to be looked out for but if you have a good understanding of your daughter these will be very easy to spot.
