Teens and the People They Can Trust: The Friends VS. Family Dilemma

The issue of trusting friends versus trusting family is biggest for young people because once people are adults the general rule of trusting people on a case-by-case basis tends to apply.

Young people, though, tend to have the world of family and the world of friends, and those two worlds often conflict. As with adults, there is the general rule that who can be trusted depends on the person. Still, because of their age, young people have that extra factor of those two worlds that make deciding who can be trusted just that much more complicated.

Issues that face young people sometimes almost force them to choose between trusting parents or friends. The way it typically works is, for example, in the case of a teenager who has decent parents and friends who are generally decent kids but who live in a world where drugs, drinking, and sex are common for kids. The teenager may decide he'd like to store some beer in his bedroom (and, by the way, he's got some weed under his mattress). He doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. His friends all do smoke and drink. Nobody plans to become an alcoholic or a drug addict or to commit any crimes.

His parents discover the beer and are disgusted. Their son is only 16 years old. It is against the law for him to drink and against the law for them to allow it. They know that people who start drinking young are more likely to become alcoholics. They have no idea how much or how often he drinks. They are scared and disappointed and resentful that they have this issue to deal with.

When they bring it up to their son they get in a heated argument. He tells them his friend's parents let his friend have a few beers in his room because they'd rather he drink there than out in a car. The argument leads to a whole lot of things being said, and the parents decide to go into the son's room and look around to see what else he's been doing. "After all, it turns out he's sneaky and doing things he shouldn't be doing." They find the weed. Another heated argument goes on, and at this point the son doesn't trust his parents, and they don't trust him.

He leaves the house, goes out with his friends (who all think what he's doing is fine because they're 16 and thinking with the brain of 16-year-olds), and he even talks with his friend's parents about how his parents think he shouldn't keep beer in the house and how they can't be trusted. His friend's parents side with him because they are more lenient than his own parents are. At this point, the teenager has his friends and even their parents to back him up. His parents seem to be the only ones in the world who have a "different point of view" and who are "judgmental" (because they see drinking at 16, getting drunk, and violating the laws about the drinking age as wrong). Everyone outside his home is on his side. They all understand him. His parents don't. They all back-up his idea that his parents are old fashioned, too strict, unreasonable, and not to be trusted.

In the meantime, his sister and brother are back home, angry at him for making Mom and Dad so upset and for wanting to drink or smoke weed (because they're still young enough to think doing those things is not a good idea or because they're older than he and realize the very same thing). Oh boy, his family just seems to be "against him" completely.

The truth is, though, that his parents are the only people who care about him and his health and his future as much as they do. They do love him. They have a responsibility to tell him right from wrong and to try to get him to stop doing things that aren't healthy. They're right about early drinking, and they're right to realize that too much drinking can damage brain cells. They know about how many 16-year-olds are killed in cars because of drinking.

They're right to be concerned that their son's school grades may suffer or that he's spending money on weed and getting involved with people who are selling illegal substances. They're aware that their son is doing what so many other kids do these days, but they are grown up enough and intelligent enough and scared enough to know that they may be the only voice he will hear that at least tries to point out what's right, wrong, or unhealthy.

When people are teenagers who think as teenagers do and want to do what all the other kids are doing, and when they have the kind of thinking that teenagers often have (which is, "It won't happen to me."), they can feel their parents or families don't understand them and that friends do. The fact is friends often do understand other teens better in some ways than parents do. Since friends want to do the same things he does they see nothing wrong with it. Friends who don't have the solid, caring, sensible, parents he has have no idea what its like to have such parents. They may even have a little envy of his and his previously close family because their mother or father haven't been around or because they aren't mature, solid, people.

Sometimes the friends who have already become alienated from their own families because of the things they are doing that are wrong kind of like it when another friend starts to go through similar trouble. Now they're not the only one who is alienated from parents. Now they are "equally misunderstood victims of unreasonable parents". His friends are nice. Their parents are nice. The teen knows how many kids at school do what he's doing. It surely seems to him that his parents are the only people in the world who think as they do.

His parents, though, remember how much nicer life was when sex, drugs, and alcohol weren't the big part of life they are for today's kids. His parents know that young people's brain is not fully mature until early- to mid- twenties and that young people don't think as sensible as older people do. Their immature brains also make them misunderstand some motives of others. His parents know how over the next 8 or so years their son will be at a stage in life where his life and future will be at the highest risk of being destroyed. They remember how grateful they were when their baby boy was born healthy, and they just want him to take good care of the healthy body he was lucky enough to have been given in this life.

His parents also know that in a world where so many kids are doing things that aren't healthy and where some of those kids have parents who don't see how scary that is they may be the only people who are willing to say what needs to be said, whether or not their son hates them for it. They have the choice to just accept what he wants to do and let him do it (which would make them parents who relinquish their responsibilities) or to fight with their son and hope that eventually some of what they say gets through. They know that their job is to get him safely to adulthood, and they know that not doing that job is not an option. They know that if they give up he'll have nobody to tell him what's right, so they decide to get ready for several years of fighting and letting him know they're still strong enough to stand up for what they see as right because they believe that one day he'll mature and realize they were, in fact, the people he should have trusted all along.

Who can be trusted generally depends on the individuals; but when young people are deciding whether to trust friends or family they need to be very careful about the very natural tendency to trust people who seem to be on their side and understand them over solid, decent, loving, parents who seem to be the enemy. Parents aren't always
right, by any means, but in many, many, situations they just may be the ones young people should trust the most.