These same parents often fail to correct or even acknowledge more serious, and dangerous, issues such as drugs, intimate relationships and wrong peers. Some social learning theory may help parents understand why an adolescent child's behavior constantly changes, seems unstable and can create enormous stress for all family members. Adolescence follows the developmental stage of puberty. The secondary sexual changes which occurred during puberty created a new focus on the child. Adolescent children begin to look for models to identify with and simultaneously begin to operate independent of the family system.
Adolescents thrive on structure simply for the fact there is little predictability in their lives.
Parents should focus on providing a structure, and they can utilize community resources to help. For example, parents who cannot be home for their children can call on community centers, boys and girls clubs, churches and schools to provide activities where caring adult supervision is available. Parents can exert the most influence on a child by coordinating who has contact with the child, because children are influenced by who they are around the most. At this stage of development, peer influences are probably the most important factors to an adolescent. It is vital for parents to structure teen activities around positive peer cultures.