How do you help your children through teenage years?

To date Tony Kibet can't quite trace the exact moment he went from a disciplined teenager to a rogue juvenile offender.

It is while in high school, Highway Secondary School in Nairobi, where he recalls he badly wanted to fit in with the 'famous boys'.

"Hanging with the cool boys gave you clout. Unfortunately for me instead of remaining cool I became a drug addict, a thief and borderline insane," he says.

He smoked marijuana and drank alcohol. He had frequent run-ins with the authorities for misdemeanors and bad behaviour.

But he still managed to sit for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams and join college in 2012. His dalliance with drugs didn't stop. In fact, at some point, he not only used marijuana but retailed it as well.

In that turbulence, he broke up with his girlfriend, plunging him into more trouble. He spent nights in police cells. And then there was a failed attempt to steal; he was caught by the public who beat him black and blue.

"Losing my girlfriend hurt me. I grew aggressive, rowdy and more violent. I stopped caring about my own life because there was no one to listen to me," he says.

Being a parent, Jane Nyutu knows only too well the troubles of a child's teenage and adolescent years, something she blames on the changing times. "Young people today manifest so much trouble compared to the years when we were growing up. Back then the society was one cohesive unit and parenting was more communal. Today though, in urban environments where parents are busy, young people have been left to their own devices," she says.

Times may have changed but discipline, opines another parent Lucy Kang'ori, is still demanded of the young today just as much as it was decades ago.

She says: "Rebellion and indiscipline are synonymous with adolescence and teenage years. That does not mean that such behaviour should be condoned. It is a critical stage of growth that has direct effects on the adult this young person will become."

Jane and Lucy wear several hats: they are trained teachers, mothers and professional counselling psychologists. Despite this, they too have had their fair share of trouble with teenagers. Their sons and daughters have also made the wrong choices.

"Parents, regardless of academic qualifications, should be wary of what their teenagers are doing. Adolescents are young and curious. They have questions which need answers," observes Lucy.

In the 27 years she has counselled young people, Jane notes, she has identified four areas young people wish their parents could guide them through: drug use, relationships, grief and sex.

The former Mang'u High School teacher says that the dynamism of life has created a disconnect between parents and their teenagers. Individualism in modern urban societies has made the situation worse.

"It is not shocking to meet young people shouldering huge burdens without their parents' knowledge. If this young person does not meet with a counsellor, to whom she/he can talk to, they are likely to land in unfamiliar waters," Jane, who is also the director at the Centre for Counselling and Capacity Building in Nairobi, says.

Unfamiliar waters would be a scary space within which the teenager has not identified who they are and what future they want for themselves, says Lucy. In those waters, they may experiment with things that are not age-appropriate to find answers. This may as well translate into a troubled adulthood.

"Parents have grown increasingly busy with demanding careers. They spend less time at home to see their children grow. That is unfortunate. In an ideal situation they should be present in the lives of their children," Jane admonishes.

Parents, she adds, play the vital role of giving a child direction: creating self-awareness and leading them towards a purpose. As long as a young person has no sense of that purpose they are prone to mistakes.

In a book titled 'An Integrated Approach to Peer Counselling' authored by Jane and Lucy, they write: "... if people [young people] explore what is positive and negative within themselves then they have the opportunity to enhance their positive and reduce their weaknesses."

For a teenager, still on the cusp of adolescence, they will need guidance to identify that which is positive and negative about them.

Looking back, Tony believes he didn't have that guidance. He says: "I never felt that my parents were open to me approaching them for a conversation. There was little or no avenue for me to tell them that I was struggling in school; that I had suffered bullying and it affected my life. I wish they had offered me the freedom to talk to them about my troubles."

In the opinion of Halimu Shauri, a sociologist with Pwani University, "In human growth and development there are three critical aspects that define that person: emotions, physicality and intellect. These shape out during adolescent and teenage years."

Halimu adds that if parents don't take their rightful place in nurturing the lives of their teenagers then they become susceptible to peer pressure and conventional wisdom – which may not be the right thing.

But what of tough parenting: spanking the crooked ways out of young people?

"I don't subscribe to that school of thought," Lucy says. "You won't bring a lost child back into the fold by simply beating them. There are moments a parent may be justified for taking that route. However, until the parent sits down and reasons with this teenager not much will come out of it."

Tony's progressive decline ran a full course; eventually sending him to a mental hospital.

"I went through three months of treatment which involved psychiatric evaluation and counselling sessions. I came to the realization that there was nothing to be proud of in my life. I had failed my KCSE (compared to my siblings) and I had a police record," he says.

Today, through his outfit, Triumph Music, Tony travels around the country, advocating for good parenting and speaking against drug abuse.

"I am not an expert in parenting but I know that every teenager needs their parents more than any other person," he says.