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Stress is an inevitable part of every teenager's life. During that time, people meet with their first real problems - high school and college grades, their first jobs, first important exams, first long-term friendships and having sex for the first time in their lives. When your children become teenagers, the time of being the "almighty parents" is finally over. Instead of solving problems for their children, you have to advise them and teach your children how to cope with the problems alone.

The first and the most common reason of teenagers' stress is their grades. The one thing that parents should do to make it a bit easier is to pay attention to how their children fare at school all the time, not just the day they receive a report card. Do not get angry if the child brings poor grades home, but offer your assistance and spend some extra time helping your children learn. Remember that in order to truly improve the grade, you and your children should work all semester, so don't think that you spending with your child an hour per two months will do, you have to learn with them continuously. If you don't have time or knowledge necessary to help, consider hiring a tutor.

Peers are another major cause of stress. In order to achieve a notable position in the group of peers, it is often necessary to make some terribly wrong choices - teens often try to get some esteem by taking drugs, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or having sex at an early age. What is most frustrating, it is beyond parent's abilities to prevent it directly - all they can do is to shun their children and make them do all the bad things on the street instead of in their bedroom. What parents may and should do is to make sure that the choices teens make are informed. Make sure that your children understand what happens if they get into drugs or start having a lot of sex... and what happens if they don't. Oftentimes children are so stressed because of their peers that they see no other option but to bow to the group. You have to give them such alternative.

The most difficult time in the life of a teenager is the moment of their "first time". Sex and relationships are capable of driving a wedge between parents and children that no one is then able to take out. While it is often children who make the mistakes, parents are also to be blamed. The problem is that all too often parents try to impose their vision of a good relationship and a good boyfriend or girlfriend on their children. The effects are easy to predict - children fiercely defend their independence and their right to govern their bodies and shun away their parents by doing just the opposite. What parents should do is to restrain themselves and simply give all necessary information to their children. Make sure that your children know the alternatives, especially that they are free to break the relationship, find new friends or change their social environment if they are not ready to have sex yet - they are the only masters of their bodies and there is no one who has any rights to it, even their loved ones. Only if you offer advice instead of orders, you can hope to influence your children and allow them to make the right choices. Even if they do make some mistakes, they won't be fatal - and making mistakes is perfectly ok as long as one can learn from them.