The cordiality of the relationship parents have with children goes a long way to affect their development as adolescents.

Such relationship determine if the children would confide in the parents on the decisions they make or whether they would rely on their friends for such advice or decisions.

According to some experts, the gap between parents and children in Ghana is so wide that the parents are not aware of what their children are going through, such children they say end up succumbing to peer pressure.

Speaking on this topic on the AM Show on the Joy News channel on Multi TV Friday, the founder of Smiling Hearts Foundation, an adolescent grooming organisation noted that some girls she has dealt with have even attempted ending their lives.

Natalie Takyi Appiah explained that such situations are due to a break of communication between the parents and the child which led to built-up emotional challenges.

This, in many circumstances leads these young girls to the web of male peers or in other situations some unscrupulous men.

The adolescent counsellor noted that young girls who do not receive the appropriate care and guidance in their younger years turn out to be very promiscuous in their adolescents stages and influence others badly.

“I have met a girl in a boarding school that has had sex with 10 boys, she’s had a threesome and she is the one that orchestrate for the boys to be locked in a cupboard and after lights out when the school is quiet they go and have sex with them,” she said.

She advised that the way out of these situations is not for the parents to go Rambo style on the children but to understand them and “talk with them instead of talking at them”.

The girls do not grow up on auto pilot and they do not come with a manual so you have to make yourself available to them, she noted.

She noted that her outfit is set to organise an adolescent convention to address such issues where the girls would get the chance to discuss what they would otherwise not tell their parents.

Watch the Video for more: