>>A 16 year old child has no idea what they really want in life because they have no idea what life really is at that age.>>
... because they have been sheltered and given a period of no-responsibility. No requirement is made to learn seld-accountability during that time. Hoping they ease into their adult years simply doesnt work, and never has. They either are responsible, or they are not. Anything in-between is just a head-game played on the parents.
Please spare me any "be your child's friend" speeches. If we actually allowed our children to be children longer then they would learn responsibility BEFORE they entered an adult world.
Responsibility is learned in measures just like anything else in life. You give your children responsibility for chores and handling their allowances because that's a small step in learning and if they screw that up they don't get hurt and pay for it the rest of their life because you can correct it.
If you expect them to handle the responsibility of an adult world and they fail, then those mistakes can harm them for the rest of their life. This very instance is proof that these children were given more responsibility than they could handle. The problem is that there are too many adults out there who have children and the adults aren't responsible. They aren't teaching their children responsibility at a young age and then they throw them out there and this is the results.