Between the ages of 15 and 18, individuals will begin to feel more confidence in their own decision-making abilities and will progress toward gaining genuine behavioral autonomy. Their parents should not deny them this experience by keeping them completely isolated from the world or by interfering in their decisions all the time. Parents can help their teenagers become more autonomous people by allowing them to make their own mistakes and by demonstrating that learning from these mistakes is better than never doing anything at all. Teens who are granted more autonomy early on in life tend to be more responsible and willing to take risks later on. This is because they have had some experience with failure and it has not deterred them from trying new things further down the road. Those who are denied autonomy often struggle with self-esteem and may turn to risky behaviors for emotional support. They may also find it difficult to separate themselves from their parents' expectations of who they should be and who they should be like. For example, if the parent's expectation is that their child will go to college and play football, but the child wants to be a musician, then they would feel inadequate if they didn't allow them to follow their dreams.