Today is our daughter’s 16th birthday, so I’m jotting down reflections on raising a teenager in Beijing, where there definitely are some peculiarities about life. Let me list a few of the positives and negatives.

The positives abound.

Teenagers don’t drive in Beijing. Our daughter cannot pester to use the car. Chinese law doesn’t permit anyone under 18 to drive. Isn’t China wonderful! That means she takes a lot of taxis (which are cheap) and the subway (cheaper). And we never worry about her being in a car with a reckless teenage driver.

Safety is great. Actually, it’s beyond great. We don’t worry a whit about the creepy concerns that would bother us back in the States. She’s safe in a taxi late at night. We don’t fret that she’ll get assaulted, or other weird things happening to her (or to us, for that matter). Crime does exist but the bad guys generally stay away from foreigners.

Peer pressure is minimal. Our daughter, Michelle, goes to the large international school in the northeast suburb of Beijing. Her classmates come from a mix of backgrounds. It is so varied that peer pressure is less than elsewhere. Her best female friends are South Korean and French, and her male friends are Belgian-Chinese and American. Also, they aren’t bombarded with commercials as they would be in North America. They dress differently from one another, and pressure doesn’t coalesce as it would in the States. If anything, there is pressure to succeed in school.

Now for the negatives, and there are at least two.

Teenagers flock to bars. There seem to be no rules on bar hopping in Beijing, and bar owners are all-too-eager to lure in teenagers of expatriate families. There’s not a lot to do if you are 15, 16, or 17 years old here. Movie theaters are few. Recreational opportunities are not vast. And on Friday and Saturday nights, neighborhoods filled with bars like Sanlitun are magnets for high school kids. Our daughter thinks it’s “normal.” Believe me, she will one day realize otherwise. We’ve had talks with many other parents and all seem to battle with keeping an eye on their teenagers on weekend nights.

No after-school jobs. This is China. Wages are low. Unless a teenager is really creative, he or she will not find ways to earn money. I consider it a drawback because the responsibility of having a job and the pleasure of earning one’s own money is a really great thing. Oh well, there may be plenty of time for this in the future.

Happy Birthday, Michelle!