WHENEVER your kids want to do something about which you're unhappy - going to a particular disco or staying out late, for example - they'll tell you that everybody else is going and that they are the only ones being forced to miss the fun.

Peer pressure is one of the strongest arguments a youngster can use in order to get her own way.

Some parents, of course, are anxious for their children always to be in the swim and to do what everyone else is doing, but other mums and dads capitulate with reluctance, knowing in their hearts that 15 year old Mary should be in her bed, rather than dancing till dawn and then finding her own way home through potentially dangerous streets.

Many parents are in a quandary: how and where do you draw the line between what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, when your children's friends appear to be bound by no such limits?

They are also reluctant to appear heavy handed and authoritarian, fearing that if they hold firm on an issue they ill alienate their children.

The experts call it a "crisis in parenting". And it's something that's happening all over the western world. In a period of rapid social change, parents are beginning to doubt the efficacy of the values that they inherited from their own parents.

However, limits are important for children and young people, and by failing to set them, parents may be hindering their offspring's developing into responsible, mature adults, experts say.

"At times it appears that parents are fearful of their children, because they feel that their offspring know more than they do about the world and are wiser," says Father Padraig Greene, director of the Family Centre in Boyle, Co Roscommon.

"Very often parents don't appreciate their own abilities and experiences in life. They lack confidence in themselves and believe that they lack the necessary skills to cope with the demands of adolescents."

A problem for some parents is the fact that they fail to set "limits early in a child's life. "It's extremely difficult to set limits in the teenage years when there's been no tradition of them in the child's earlier upbringing." Limits, which are often viewed as punishment, are in fact all about having a sense of responsibility, he says.

Rebellion is normal in adolescence, psychologists tell us - in fact if your teenager fails to rebel, you may have a problem.

"Teenagers find their parameters through their parents by means of trial and error and rebellion," says Pat O'Connor, headmaster of St Enda's Community School, Limerick. "The psychologist Anthony Storr says that if adolescents don't sharpen their teeth on their parents, they are unable to develop and stand on their own feet."

Problems arise when parents fail to lay down clear cut value positions, against which youngsters can rebel, but which they will eventually come to accept, he says.

SELF ESTEEM is the vital ingredient which ensures that a child matures into a well rounded human being and is able to resist peer pressure. Self esteem is the greatest gift a parent can give a child, Father Greene argues.

It's important that children walk tall, and that only happens when they have good relationships with their parents and feel lovable and capable of facing society." Peer pressure is more easily resisted if parents have a set of guidelines, rules and values, enjoy healthy, open relationships with their children and discuss with their children the reasons why staying out late, under age drinking, attending undesirable discos and the like are off limits.

Father Greene also suggests that parents should support each other, should know where their children are going and who they are with, know their friends' parents, ensure that they are supervised and know how much money they are going out with. Parents have the right to be involved with their children and know their whereabouts until they are 17 years of age, he says.

One Dublin mother of two teenage boys recommends close collaboration with the parents of your children's friends. "Even if you don't have much in common with them, it pads to cultivate them so that you all know what's going on and can set ground rules together," she says.

Teenagers learn by example - and one thing you can't say to - them is "Don't do as I do, do as I say." One father recalls setting off for a parents' association talk on substance abuse at his 16 year old son's school. Just as he was leaving, the boy said: "And I suppose after you've discussed drugs, you'll all sit down and have a few drinks."

Adolescents are extremely judgmental and are quick to note hypocrisy in their parents' behaviour, O'Connor notes. "They judge their parents on the basis of how they live out their values. Problems arise when children are constantly presented with ambiguity and have nothing to test themselves against.

"Youngsters observe the lifestyle of their parents and absorb it. If youngsters see a working philosophy in which lifestyle and values are in harmony, they are more likely, ultimately, to accept it. If you don't give them standards, they have nothing to come back to."