Wes: Last week, we discussed a question from a mother whose 15-year-old daughter had been released from a psychiatric hospital with very minimal aftercare. The mother worried that her daughter was smoking marijuana and had been manipulating the treatment team by understating her problems.

I’m not too fond of the term “manipulation” where kids are concerned. In fact, I tend to call it the M-word and ask families to banish it from their lexicon. Readers may gasp in horror, thinking somehow I’ve missed a key element of teen misbehavior over 17 years of practice. In fact, I have only met one teenager in those years who claimed teens were trustworthy. She is now in college and admits she was lying. However, parents often claim their teens are trustworthy — which never fails to amaze me. I get to hear each week what teenagers do, and most of it goes on without their parents’ knowledge.

We all need to remember that words were once magic in human history. As we evolved, the ability to communicate in the richness of language we created set the stage for pretty much everything. Language not only describes our culture; it also influences it. Musicians may claim they are just reflecting their (often dysfunctional) world, but in reality they are defining it and influencing it, too.

So if you think of your own words as magical, you’ll begin to see which ones do and don’t foster helpful thought and behavior in your teen. Several really unhelpful ones on my list include respect, trust and manipulation. These words create their own stories, and rarely are they good ones.

It’s better to think of the “manipulative” teen as someone trying to get a need met. In last week’s case, the daughter may simply be trying to get out from under what she sees as a burdensome hospitalization and treatment process. But in the larger picture, she may be trying to differentiate from her parents and not feeling much success. The entire purpose of adolescence is to transition to adulthood, so differentiation is not a problem — it’s a solution. If parents are too strict, a child has to find devious means of achieving her goal. Of course, if parents aren’t strict enough, differentiation doesn’t create any tension — nothing to push against. As we’ve discussed many times, that also leads to disaster. Balance is everything.

With teenagers, I always begin by trying to think of how their behavior serves a purpose. I don’t always end up there — some behavior is guided by anxiety, depression or attention-deficit disorder. But rarely do I find a teenager who is just out to jack up the world because it’s fun. Yes, they do exist, but if your teenager is really JUST “manipulative” then you are in a world of hurt that goes beyond what we can address in this column.

As Sam points out, teens are a constant source of entertainment (figuratively and literally) because they are so mysterious. We’ve all been teens, and yet even we find those days puzzling and strange. The key to intervening with kids is always to start by unraveling the mystery — not just assigning unkind labels that then define how we think and feel about them.

Samantha: For many parents, reading a teen is like trying to read the secret message on a cereal box without a decoder ring, so I’ll do my best at decoding. I won’t reveal every white lie teens tell their parents, but only those that could have a long-term effect on the teen, parent or both.

Teens can prey on the communication gap between their parents. Whether divorced or just unforthcoming with each other, teens can sense a parental gap and use it to their advantage. Your teen could ask you both for money for the same school function and pocket the extra change, or pit you against each other by separately asking each parent to go somewhere, and then letting you fight over the good cop/bad cop roles. By splitting, your teen has found an easy escape to do whatever she wants.

Teens often use a sleepover as an excuse to instead spend time with people you would not like. If a teen says she’s at a sleepover almost every weekend night, you have reason to be suspicious. She could easily sneak out to another friend’s house where teens are taking advantage of an out-of-town parent. Parents need to discuss their boundaries with their teens directly, while always trying to be fair. My parents’ rule is that although I have no curfew (even when I am with boys), I have to wake them to tell them I’m home, and I’m supposed to text them whenever I change locations. This rule is pretty fair, and they always know where I am and that I get home safely.

It’s a major red flag when teens quickly close their laptops or minimize Web sites on their screens when their parents walk in the room. They’re likely talking to someone or about something they don’t want parents to know about. This con is more complicated because they could be hiding anything from a conversation about how to get fake IDs to one about how they snuck out last weekend.

High school attendance offices can’t tell the difference between a parent and a kid pretending to be a parent. If a teen’s attendance data doesn’t match the parent’s memory, there’s a problem. Your teen could easily call herself in absent for “a family emergency” and head off to hang out downtown without any adults finding out.

If you think you’ve been conned, don’t jump to conclusions. Try to have an open and honest discussion about whatever you suspect about your child. If she can prove her innocence, great! If she admits to the con or you have solid evidence, don’t heap on the punishments this time; just let her know you are on to her and that a future infraction means consequences. If your teen isn’t admitting to anything and you have no evidence, let your teen know that you are always there to listen and help her if she gets herself in a tough situation.

— Dr. Wes Crenshaw is a board-certified family psychologist and director of the Family Therapy Institute Midwest. Samantha Schwartz is a senior at Lawrence High School. Opinions and advice given here are not meant as a substitute for psychological evaluation or therapy services. Send your questions about adolescent issues (limited to 200 words) to doubletake@ljworld.com. All correspondence is strictly confidential.