Laurence Steinberg Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

At a stage when young people want more than anything to be like everyone else, they find themselves the least alike. Everyone their age is growing and changing, but each at his or her own pace.

Laurence Steinberg
Most adults would not dream of belittling, humiliating, or bullying (verbally or physically) another adult. But many of the same adults think nothing of treating their adolescent child like a nonperson.... Adolescents deserve the same civility their parents routinely extend to total strangers.

Laurence Steinberg
What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making.

Laurence Steinberg
The parent-adolescent relationship is like a partnership in which the senior partner (the parent) has more expertise in many areasbut looks forward to the day when the junior partner (the adolescent) will take over the business of running his or her own life.

Laurence Steinberg
Adolescents have the right to be themselves. The fact that you were the belle of the ball, the captain of the lacrosse team, the president of your senior class, Phi Beta Kappa, or a political activist doesn't mean that your teenager will be or should be the same....Likewise, the fact that you were a wallflower, uncoordinated, and a C student shouldn't mean that you push your child to be everything you were not.

Laurence Steinberg
Adolescents need to be reassured that nothing-neither their growing maturity, their moods, their misbehavior, nor your anger at something they have done-can shake your basic commitment to them.

Laurence Steinberg
Let your child be the teenager he or she wants to be, not the adolescent you were or wish you had been.

Laurence Steinberg
Some adolescents are troubled and some get into trouble. But the great majority (almost nine out of ten) do not.... The bottomline is that good kids don't suddenly go bad in adolescence.

Laurence Steinberg