Experience

Experience guides us through life. Without experience with certain things, we can't form our opinions on them. You can not say that you don't like seafood if you have never tried it. This type of reasoning is obvious to unexperienced adolescents. Alcohol, drugs, and promescuity are all things that they know are wrong beacause that is what they are taught. But they must always try things for themselves to form their own opinions. This is when they get into trouble. I know understand the struggle and hardship that it takes to be a parent of a teens because I am now the aunt of one. My neice has just entered her first year in highschool, and my mind goes crazy everytime she tells me that she plans to go out on a Friday or Saturday night beacuse I know what is out there. I know because I have been through all the peer pressure and experimenting that teenage social events have to offer.
My neice would never think to take my advice on something if her friends have told her otherwise because of the age that she has reached. Peers have more influence on young people's lives than their parents and other respectable elders do at the adolescent age. I don't blame her because I was the same way a couple of years ago. But I have learned through my own "experience" what is right from what is wrong. You won't truely believe in something until you have actually gone through it yourself.