Question

Fourteen year old Dilsha feels free and more open with her friends than with her family. Acknowledging Dilsha's feelings, her parents should:

• A. Be concerned; deteriorating parent-adolescent relationships are often followed by a range of behavioural issues
• B. Encourage Dilsha to find new friends.
• C. Seek family counseling.
• D. Nothing to worry, since adolescence is typically a time of growing peer influence and diminishing parental influence.

Answer 1

Answer:

D. Nothing to worry, since adolescence is typically a time of growing peer influence and diminishing parental influence.

One of the most widely studied aspects of adolescent peer influence is known as deviant peer contagion (Dishion & Tipsord, 2011). This influence is the process by which peers reinforce problem behavior by laughing or showing other signs of approval that then increase the likelihood of future problem behavior.