Teen-agers with juvenile diabetes see themselves in the same light as other teenagers in many important areas of personal freedom and responsibility in their daily lives. Compared with nondiabetic teenagers, who feel that they took responsibility too early, those with diabetes are satisfied with the ages at which they assumed such responsibility, and do not feel that they have been forced into too-early assumption of responsibility for their own diabetic management. They are ready, in terms of average understanding at least, to begin to assume total responsibility for their own diabetic management at around age 12, with a view to undertaking it completely around age 15. Their view of the degree of control of their own diabetes is realistic.