Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Parents or other adult relatives should make important decisions for their older (15 to 18 year-old) teenage children. Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
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During the years of adolescence, all the decisions for the children are being made by their parents. In some families this tendency still takes place as the children are growing and becoming more mature. I strongly believe that starting with 15-16 years old, teenagers must start making important decisions up to their own discretion. Doing that, teenagers will become more independent, increase self-confidence and prevent themselves from unintentional mistakes their parents could made.
First of all, sooner or later child will be in situations when he must do his own choice. Seventeen years old is exactly the age when teenagers are applying for the college and, therefore, have to leave their home and live away from their families. If one was always told what to do by his parents, either do the homework or go to bed, he would not be able to make such basic decisions alone. Not to mention living for months, studying and providing himself with the sustenance. Following directions of his parents hi still be callow even in 20 and 25. Therefore, making their own decisions in the early stages of teenage years will give children necessary experience, indispensable for living alone.
Secondly, observations of your own successful decisions will increase self-confidence in personality of the child. Such positive experience will make teenagers believe in themselves and act decisively in the future. One of my friends, Matt, being seventeen years old juvenile, fortuitously won substantial sum of money in lottery. Despite his parents wanted him to put these money on the bank account, they ultimately decided to let Matt to make his own choice how to spend it. Matt has bought a stock which hat tripled in the half of year. It was the right decision which Matt did by himself. Ever since he never hesitate how he should spend money and never need any advice of anybody else. Matt became mature independent man. Therefore, making their own decision, children strengthen confidence in themselves.
Finally, parents, trying to help to their teenage children by advices sometimes unintentionally making decisions that are inherently wrong. When I was a teenager and just finished my study in the high school, me and my classmates had to choose which major to go on in the college. I knew in the first place that I adored math and was going to get degree in this field. In contrast, many of my classmates did not know who they wanted to be. Their parents have chosen for them "appropriate" programs that, as they considered, would best fit for their children. After seven years it turned out that many of my classmates eventually had to change their major, because it was not exactly what they would like to study. Opposite, now I am finishing my Ph.D. in math. If my classmates made they own choice which school and program to apply for, probably, they would not go in the wrong way in the very beginning. Hence, decisions, being made by parents are not necessarily the best ones for their teenagers who can come up with more effective solutions.
Summarizing, I adhere to the opinion, that in age of 15-18 years old, teenagers can and ought to act up to their own discretion making important decisions by themselves. Indeed, it teaches them how to be independent, increases their self-confidence and protects them from possible mistakes of their parents.