A penny for my thoughts

What is it about parents and over-cautiousness?
A friend of mine, A, invited another of my friends, P, to the PEACE convention. The Peace convention, as you may or may not know, is a convention that helps people better understand Islam. P was invited, even though she wasn't a Muslim because she'd been interested in knowing more about other religions. She'd been asking her Muslim friends several questions about their religion and practices. Her mother is an intelligent woman, who's studied plenty of psychology at the PG level. P had no reason to doubt that she wouldn't be allowed to attend the convention- but when she asked her mother for permission to go, she was refused. She was told point-blank that she was NOT to go to the convention- "not even if there were marks to attend this''. P was taken aback. P's mom had always been reasonable as a parent. But this flat refusal of permission set P's back up, and made her feel rebellious. Of course, P didn't go so far as to actually attend this convention against her mom's orders, but she did take perverse pleasure in talking to her mom about how interesting she found Islam and of how her friends encourage her interests. P knew perfectly well that she was acting puerile, but all the same, she knew what her mother had done was a misjudged and immature step in parenting.
I know that adults always think that the teenagers usually think they know best. But teenagers of this day and age are a lot mature, in spite of the evidence to the contrary. I also believe parents should be more careful than ever with their parenting techniques, because kids really are smarter than before.
Besides, what P's mother did was so obviously ill-judged, it was bound to cause misunderstandings between mother and daughter. Reverse Psychology had reared its ugly head!