Q: How does the brain development of adolescents affect their learning and self-confidence? How do you continue to engage a teenager who wants to be more independent?

A: There is a stage of rapid brain development during adolescence that allows young people to learn and accomplish many new skills. Adolescents think a lot about themselves, what others think about them, and how to separate from and become more independent of their parents.

If parents have given them too much power and freedom too early, they are likely to fight almost any new rules and regulations by parents. If parents have been more authoritative in the past and adolescents can be trusted, they can now increase adolescent freedom and choices, because their teens are on their pathway, albeit a very long one, to adulthood. During that gradual separation period to adulthood, adolescents look to peers and other adult mentors to guide them. Their parents are still very important to them, but less powerful than earlier in their lives.

If your teens are in environments where they are surrounded by achievement-oriented peers with good values, it will greatly enhance their opportunities for moving forward toward both achievement and fulfillment. Almost regardless of their peer environment, adolescents struggle with confidence issues and sometimes feel isolated, alone and anxious.

They typically don't appear that way to adults or even to peers. Thus, when they compare their inside feelings of insecurity to the outward behaviors of other adolescents, they typically believe others are doing fine and think that only they are struggling with insecurity issues. When they do find peers who are also trying to disentangle their worries, they form peer groups or cliques that, at least temporarily, understand each other. These groups feel close, but with time, some teens may splinter off, causing some young people to feel as if they're experiencing dreadful losses. They usually find new close friends with whom they can again share their intense feelings. The inclusion in these groups helps them to feel secure temporarily; the exclusion causes them to feel isolated, alone, bullied or unpopular.

The ups and downs for adolescents are quite natural and part of learning to live adult lives in the future. Although much changes in each generation, thinking back to your own adolescence will help you to identify with the feelings and discoveries of your teenager.

The very best way to help your teenagers learn, grow and develop self-confidence and positive values is to encourage their engagement in positive peer activities that emphasize intellectual, creative and ethical values, and keep them away, as much as possible, from drug use and too-social crowds. Community, religious and school extracurricular groups can engage their energy and thinking, and entice them into positive learning and altruistic activities. They can center their lives on productive engagement that both contribute to their education and to making the world a better place. They can bond with other positive teens and be in contact with adult mentors who are actively pursuing positive goals. That is a great challenge for parents, because teens are easily influenced by both technology and other teens who can lead them astray to share risky behaviors. Parents should make every effort to have plenty of family work and fun that helps teens to value their family life and prevents their assuming that other homes, with worse values, are preferable. It is indeed a very interesting and exciting time for you and your teens.

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Dr. Sylvia B. Rimm is the director of the Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, a clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the author of many books on parenting. More information on raising kids is available at www.sylviarimm.com. Please send questions to: Sylvia B. Rimm on Raising Kids, P.O. Box 32, Watertown, WI 53094 or srimm@sylviarimm.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.