We raised our family of three sons in a small conservative rural community. Our oldest son was soon to be heading into his first year of Junior High School. It was a difficult time for him. He chummed in a threesome and his two friends were allowed much more freedom than we allowed. His friends were given large weekly allowances and they could come and go as they pleased when their parents were at work. Our son had a lesser allowance, which we felt was more than adequate for his needs, and we did not allow our children to "hang around" down town. By summers end his two friends decided to exclude him from their circle. How tough is it when you are going off to a brand new school and you have just been dumped by the two people you considered to be your best friends?
We noticed that our son was beginning to undergo noticeable changes since his entrance into the Junior High level. He was generally very good in his academics but suddenly we could tell he was concerned about other students' perceptions of him if he continued to be an A student. His choice of music began to change to songs with loud, angry lyrics. We expressed our concern over the amount of cursing in the songs and he simply responded " I don't listen to the words, I just like the beat."
He was learning to play the guitar on his own and we would often find him practicing along with the CD, so we decided to step back and try to keep communication open, wondering all the while if we were doing the right thing.
Soon enough, our son made a couple of new friends and seemed to be happy. He loved sports, but genetics dealt him a rotten deal and he found himself too small to make the cut on most of the school teams. His choice of clothing began to take a definite trend in the direction of Johnny Cash black, (although he claimed to hate country music) and one day he asked me if he could color his hair black. At this point my imagination was really running wild as I feared for my blond blue-eyed son. Combining his choice of music with his preoccupation with the color black left me very concerned. I asked him why he wanted black hair to which he replied " I just want black hair." Thinking quickly I responded that when he could give us a reason for the black hair, his father and I would consider it. Until then the answer was "No." My husband and I were hairstylists so we didn't think our son would pay to have someone else color his hair when he could get it done by us for free. The thought did cross our minds that he might get a friend to put in a store bought color, but he would not want to waste his allowance that way - so we hoped.
We soon noticed that our son was experiencing increased periods of moodiness and he spent more time in his room with the door closed and that horrible music (our description) booming away as he played his guitar along with it. We continued to ask him about school and his friends to which he replied that things were fine, but they would be better if he had black hair. We continued to insist on a reason, which we felt was a reasonable request. We were not saying "no", we were saying "why".
Finally, one day our son came back with the same request and he explained that he was under a lot of peer pressure to smoke. He hoped that if he did something a little outrageous and extreme then his friends would back off on the smoking issue. I was so impressed with his strategy that we didn't waste any time. Our new black-haired, blue eyed son even found some new support in favor of not smoking simply because he was now "cool" and his decision was respected.
Our son learned a lot of lessons from that experience. In as much as he impressed his friends, he discovered that the attitude in our small conservative community regarding extreme fashion made it difficult for him to land a job. He often felt his questions in the classroom were not taken seriously by some of his teachers once he colored his hair. We wondered if his demeanor and the manner in which he carried himself in the classroom changed with his appearance. It was a challenging time through which we tried to listen and communicate, all the while, holding our breath.
In total, our son colored his hair only a few times before he was ready to be his old blond self again. The short but important experience seemed to make him more self confident and determined to do well in his studies. He eventually went on to study audio engineering - so I guess he did like "the beat" after all. It was during that point in his life that he came to some conclusions about how opinions are often formed about people because of their appearance and he vowed that he would try not to make those same judgments himself.
My advice to parents of teenagers is simply this -

• keep your ears and eyes open. Listen to what your teenagers have to say and watch the body language as well.
  
• Keep communication open with your child. Even if the conversation seems to repeat itself, they will see that you care.
• Pick your battles. Know why you are saying "no". If some "nos" can be "yeses", even if with restrictions, you may prevent rebellion.
  
• Before you say "no", know why you are saying no. When you can explain your reasons, your child will be more apt to respect your decision.
  
• Give your child the benefit of the doubt, whenever possible, to handle some of his or her own problem solving. Sometimes it is difficult to watch your children make mistakes, but if it is relatively harmless, they stand to learn a lot from these experiences.