I'm sure everyone has experienced it - that difficult time in everyone's life when parents and children seem to disagree on every aspect of life. Children (or shall I say young adults) want to experience the freedoms and responsibilities of adults. Parents want their children to stay young and innocent.

I think parents suffer from what I'll call "future withdrawal syndrome." They see their children growing up and feel it was just yesterday that their children were taking their first steps. Now they're in high school, and soon they'll be off to college (for me, eight months). I think that really disturbs my mother and father - especially my mother. I am the baby of the family and once I'm gone, my parents will be alone in that big house.

Perhaps this is the reason my parents are so strict with me. It seems as though the rules, curfew and other things, haven't changes since my freshman year. I have three reasons to explain this. Maybe my parents are just really strict, which I believe the least. Maybe they are afraid to give me privileges because they fear that I can't handle them. The final possible reason is that they are fearful of me growing up.

From my perspective, all my goals in life are related to maturing. But they become difficult to achieve when I have so many rules and regulations to abide by. For example, I try to live each day to the fullest and have fun. But my parents, in my opinion, try to forbid any fun I could have. Their idea of fun is a nice evening in the bowling alley ... sorry, Mom, that's not what I like. I have fun with my friends, hanging out (another phrase my parents don't understand) usually in a house with no parental supervision. That's not good enough in my parents' eyes. They always want to know who's going to be there.

Perhaps the only resolution to this problem (and every other teenager's) is compromise. Parents need to think back to when they were teenagers. They also need to learn to trust their children and be confident that their children can handle themselves in difficult situations. They need to see that each difficult situation in a person's life is a learning experience. Preventing them from experiencing these makes them less prepared for the future.

Teenagers need to know how their parents feel about letting go of their children. They need to make this transition as easy as possible and avoid confrontations with their parents. Both parents and children need to be open with each other. This is the first step to a lasting relationship of love between parent and "child."