When is the right time to start giving our children more freedom? How much do we give them? How do we know we can trust them to do the right thing? These answers were all answered for me in an ebook. This is my example.

As a father of a 14 year old girl I thought this would be an appropriate subject as I am still going through this. This is what I learned from a parenting ebook and how it has worked for me.

Many of you parents out there will understand it when I say I have a daughter that is 14 years old going on 21. She is constantly seeing how far I will let her go, no matter what the subject. The one that I have had the hardest problem with is her independence. She wants more of it of course, and thinks that I don't want to give her any. It is sometimes hard to find a good balance. Do I let her go to the mall with her friends alone? (meaning without adult supervision) What about the movies with a "friend" that is a boy? These were some of my hardest decisions.

What I learned though was that I could trust my daughter. This book was very specific on how to come to this conclusion. I was given very specific questions to ask myself. Such as "how does she handle her current degree of freedom?", and "how well does she handle her current responsibilities?". There were many more questions, not just these two. But I will dwell on these for just a minute.

I have given her little "tests" before to see how she would do. I found that she showed good judgment. I considered how well she followed through with commitments and handled responsibilities when it came to doing chores and her baby sitting. These were all things that this book told me to look at.

Something else I did was to look at how independent my daughter was. As you know, peer pressure can be a very strong influence to a young girl. More importantly, can she still make the right decisions when being confronted with conflict.

These were just some of the questions I had to ask myself about my daughter. Then I needed to ask myself questions about the people she was going to be with. Did I know them? Do I know their parents? Were they "Bad" kids? Kids will tend to act good or hide their true natures when an adult is around, how do I know they won't get my child into trouble.

Needless to say, after getting this book and learning what I needed to do as a parent, my daughter and I have come to an understanding. She will be allowed to do certain things, and as long as she acts appropriately, she will slowly be given more freedom. The one thing I can tell you, is because of the things I learned in this book, my daughter and I have a great relationship built on trust and honesty. Don't get me wrong, we have our disagreements, but we talk them out and come to a mutual decision. Another thing I learned how to do with this book.