It is a sign of your child's maturity that he allows you to help him develop a plan and to work out the things that he is to accomplish in his life.

Many children will not allow you to do this. They are afraid that you are going to push them into something that they don't want or you are going to direct or force them to do things that are not in keeping with their own ideas or thoughts.

There are several possibilities in this case.

You may indeed be overbearing and pushing the child to go where he does not want. Do an introspection. Perhaps with the assistance of another loved one in order to determine whether this is correct.

The child's fears and concerns may be groundless and may be based upon other children, his peers, who have been pushed into things by his parents and may be concerned that you will do the same thing. This can sometimes be overcome by explaning that just as he wants to be his own self and independent so too you want to be your own self and you want him to relate to you as an individual and not as an extension of another parent or senior authority who is overbearing.

Children sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between one person who is overbearing and people in general or even society which is overbearing and it may be necessary to explain the difference to the child.

One good measure of maturity is your child's acceptance of the need to plan his life and willingness to allow others to work together with him in order to make this plan.

This may mean that the child does not necessarily require or benefit the most from assistance from a parent in helping him develop this plan - he may have to sit with a professional or with another trusted friend - but the bottom line is that he feels mature enough to want to be able to control his own life and the best way to control his own life is to understand himself, understand where he is going, understand his true desires and feelings.

This understanding is important. After all, a child who doesn't know where he really wants to go may be attracted by others who pressure him and he will have to follow those group norms.

A more mature child will realize that the way to know where he really wants to go instead of being pulled by others is by understanding his own goals, needs, and feelings. Once he is in touch with them, once he understands what he is going to be doing in the future, then he cannot be pulled by others who have their own agendas which are obviously going to conflict with his own agenda and his own way of seeing the world and his own list of goals that he intends to accomplish. He will see that any attraction to other fringe groups will mean that he is subservient to them and that he will ultimately have to follow and future their goals rather than his own.

After he sees that creating his own goals can help him become independent then he will be more interested in developing his own goals and to do it as quickly and as thoroughly as possible in order to make sure that he is really independent, that he is really moving along in his own direction as he wants to do rather than in the direction determined by others.