Ask your adolescent (as well as yourself) the following question:  When you are driving or when you are with someone who is driving, and the light turns yellow, what do you do?  Often times the answer is “I speed up and I go through it.”  You might then say, “That’s interesting because in the driver’s manual the instruction is “prepare to stop.” So, what’s the point of this conversation with them?  It would be good for them to know that red means stop, green means go and yellow means prepare to stop.  Actually, when we see green it means go after checking oncoming traffic from both sides.  And when the light is yellow it means prepare to stop unless doing so puts you in the middle of the intersection—then it means proceed and put yourself out of harm’s way.  What is it that you are trying to tell your teen-ager?  “In any situation in any moment, you can ask yourself, ‘if I were driving does this situation feel like a red, green or yellow light.’  If you are uncertain, then consider it a yellow light and prepare to stop and re-evaluate.” Red=stop; Green=proceed; Yellow=prepare to stop/pause/consider.   Tell your adolescent if they can’t get a sense of the color then consider the situation the same as a yellow light.

Even though we know that the capacity to reflect is still in its development stage and they may not fully comprehend what we are saying, it is good to share this metaphor with them.  Just because they may have difficulty computing it doesn’t mean they can’t register it and file it away and recall it as they live into the days, weeks, months and years of their lives.