While efforts to forbid a child from seeing a group of peers will likely be unsuccessful, parents can set limits about who can be at the house or when adolescents need to come home at night. In respectful ways, parents can express discomfort with their child's peer group and have conversations about their discomfort. In some cases, parents may not know the group of peers very well and may have made judgments based on physical appearances only. Sometimes children do not have access to like-minded peers within their school. Perhaps they are one of a few Black or Hispanic students, or perhaps they feel alone in discovering that they have romantic feelings toward people of their same gender.
Parents can help their adolescent find like-minded peer groups outside of school.
It is good for youth to have links to several different groups outside of school. The need for privacy during adolescence is quite different. While the need for adolescents to have their own bedroom or private space is important in the United States, it is not an issue in India, for example. The amount of freedom we allow and autonomy we encourage in our adolescents here in the United States is also quite unique. In India, adolescents do not break away from their families during adolescence, but they remain deferent and respectful to their parents well into adulthood.