TEENAGERS AND PEER PRESSURE

By:  Tina  

“Do your homework.”  “Clean your room.”  “Take out the garbage.”  Sound familiar?  These parental urgings echo in most teenager's ears and many times, receive little if any response.  Now suppose your teenager’s friends are encouraging him or her by saying “Come on, take a drink.”  “Let’s skip school today.”  “Let’s have some fun and paint graffiti on the high school.”  I wonder how your teenager would react.

What exactly is peer pressure?  When a teenager’s friends influence their thoughts and behavior, that is peer pressure.  This influence can be verbal, nonverbal, and even unconscious.  This pressure can negatively or positively impact your teen’s behavior.  Peer pressure is a powerful influence, one that all parents need to understand. 

Why is peer pressure so powerful?  Research suggests that a teenager’s task is to make a break from their parent’s influence and identify with the value of their peers.  Let’s face it, teenagers spend many more waking hours with their peers as opposed to family members.  Friends seem to become the utmost important thing in a teenager’s life and fitting into that group of friends is a crucial task.  Teenagers seem to “try on” different thoughts, ideas and lifestyles that their friends can offer.  They try to break away from the values and standards that parents have instilled in them in an effort to discover themselves.

The fact is that an adolescent brain is a work in progress.  It constantly seeks new experiences but it does not have the ability to say, “This could be harmful to my health.”  Additionally, the teen brain seems to have a higher need for new, exciting and intense stimulation.  However, new, exciting and intense experiences may translate into “risky” behavior.  Because a teenager’s brain is seeking this new stimulation and can not always put the brakes on a bad idea, a friend’s suggestion to partake in a risky behavior is tempting regardless of the consequences. 

What can teenagers do to get a handle on all of this pressure?  Here are a few suggestions from teenhelp.com.  You can read the entire article at: http://www.teenhelp.com/teen-issues/peer-pressure.html

• Decide what your values and standards are before you get into a situation.
• Choose good friends who share your values.
• Avoid situations where people are doing things you do not want to do.
• Think about your reasons and the consequences of your decisions and actions.
• Practice ways to say no.
• Talk to your parents or a trusted adult about the kinds of peer pressure you face and listen to their  advice.
• With you parents or another trusted adult, come up with a code word you can use to let the adult know that you need help getting out of a bad situation but can’t talk about it.                         

What can parents do to deal with peer pressure?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Remember that you are one of the biggest influences on your teen.
• Remember that it may seem like your teen is not listening to you, but they truly are listening.
• When parents stay involved in their teen’s lives, the teen tends to make better choices for themselves.
• Stay interested and involved in what your teen is doing and be aware of what he or she is up to.
• Be consistent with your message about expectations.  If you expect that your teen will not drink, smoke, do drugs or have sex, chances are he or she will be less likely to do so.  It really is as simple as that.

Source:

Herman, Judith W. “The Teen Brain as a Work in Progress: Implications for Pediatric Nurses.” Pediatric Nursing. 2005 31(2): 144-148.