Teens are not children! -- LiveWire Teen Forums

This is longish but I want to say it.

It upsets me that parents treat teenagers as though we were still children. I think this happens with guys and girls, but it's even worse with girls.

You are told what you can and can't wear, and even if they don't stop you from wearing it they complain so much about it that it ends up stressing you. You can't get tattoos or piercings without getting an earful, and sometimes even talking about getting them is a huge crisis at home. They think they know what's best for you all the time and pass judgment on who you can or cannot date.

They expect you to act responsibly but they don't let you make all the decisions that are about yourself and only yourself. They give you a curfew and if you're not back by that time you could get grounded. That basically means that you are a prisoner in your own house. Only it's not really your house because you don't decide any of the important things that happen in it. They can decide to take your cell phone, camera, or computer away if they think you don't deserve to have the right to use them. I think that's the same as if they told a 6-year old that they can't have ice cream because they were bad. You have no rights!

They don't think you have the right to decide when you want to have sex and with whom because they say you don't have the psychological and emotional maturity to make those decisions. To me that really means that they think your brain is underdeveloped and that you have an inferior intellect.

I think that if parents want us to act responsibly they have to let us make our own decisions and not the decisions they want us to make. If you screw up really bad you learn not to do something again. But sometimes you do things only because you know they don't want you to do them and that's not a good thing to do. Sometimes you make good decisions but have to do things so that they don't find out and everything feels wrong because it has to be a secret.

I haven't had sex yet. The only reason why I haven't had sex yet is because I've decided not to. But if I decide to have sex with anyone it should be my decision and I shouldn't have to consult it with anybody else except the person I'm going to have sex with. Children can't make that decision but teens know what sex is and even what the consequences could be.

Even if a teen says yes to sex the other person could get into a lot of trouble because they see you as a child who is an idiot who can't say yes, even if nobody forced you. Having sex as a teen should only be illegal if you are raped or if you rape somebody else. Making it illegal forces anybody to have to do it in secret and make a lot of mistakes they wouldn't make if they could be open about it.

I know that not all "adults" make the right decisions about their jobs, spending, or sex but nobody thinks they should be grounded or lose the right to the car for screwing up. No. They call that life experiences. But some of them act just as stupidly as they think we do. They say we can't make decisions because we have no life experience but, how are we supposed to get experiences if they don't let us HAVE experiences?

That's it. I'm done.

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