Understanding & Confronting the Roots of Peer Pressure

Information based on content from the BOOK: A Chicken’s Guide to Talking Turkey with Your kids about Sex (Leman/Bell)

• Parents can exert a far greater influence-for good or for ill-if they’ll become more involved. YOU, the parent, are the greatest influence in your kid’s life!

• What matters most is the model you give your child, especially during their most vulnerable times of the day- waking, struggling thru homework, getting ready for school, or relaxing at the end of the day. Puberty education has everything to do with sex, & it has nothing to do with sex. It’s what you say about sex & the physical affection you model to your spouse, but it’s also about the home life you have in general. It’s what transpires during the day. It’s what u say when you get up, when you greet each other, or when you care for someone who’s sick/hurt.

• God uses the very aspects that seem the most mundane to shape our lives & the lives of our kids. When it comes to sexuality & expressing what it means to be a man or a woman, your kids are going to draw from what they know best: mum & dad.

•  Your marriage relationship forms your kid’s sexuality more than anything else; you demonstrate to your kids how they should live in the most private parts of life. 

REALITY CHECK

•  Consider ‘real life’ versus the messages from Reality TV, media,etc.,which pushes kids to grow up too fast, & to develop unrealistic concepts about life.

• The interesting dilemma & the power behind most peer influence is the fact that your boy or girl wants desperately to be anyone except who he or she is. Kids want to stand out in one way (being popular or noticed), but they want to blend in as well (not drawing embarrassing attention, not being picked on). Our job as parents is to teach them how to become their own person rather than to define themselves by their peers’ reactions.

• ‘Be your own person’ can be a hard sell to a pubescent who wants to be like everyone else. As a parent, the trick is to encourage your child to be one of a kind, a true original, & to let the child know she doesn’t have to go along with everyone else’s folly & opinion!

• Parents are as vulnerable to peer pressure as their children! You’re often the ones allowing your kids to go along with the pack because YOU want to keep up appearances. Before you tackle peer pressure with your kids, make sure you’re aware of it in yourself!

BE AWARE: YOUR KID WILL STRUGGLE WITH PEER PRESSURE!

•  BE prepared to expect the struggle & to parent the situation appropriately; it will come; the feelings of wanting to be ‘like them’. It’s normal; choose to handle it well. Choose to be a prepared & informed parent ahead of time. Know the parents & the kids in your child’s world; keep doors of communication open between parent’s of your kids friends & acquaintances, & among their friends/acquaintances.

• Maintain respect & communication. Ensure your ‘no’ is ‘no, & your ‘yes’ is ‘yes’, but leave room for them to be able to ‘convince’ you of something that’s important to them, while maintaining boundaries of respect & your right as the parent to maintain your position of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ where & when required. Be aware of resistance to authority in rolling of the eyes, shrugging of shoulders, etc. Be prepared to walk away or finish the appeal when the manipulation starts. Take caution in bargaining with your kids on something you’ve already made perfectly clear. In one sense, this is a reverse form of peer pressure; the kids are influencing the parents! In such a case, the adults are allowing the pubescent to determine what is appropriate & right.

•  A good MEASURE is to look at your kid’s demeanor now & multiply that by a few more years & a lot of attitude, & you’ll have a pretty good indication/picture of what life will be like when you’re parenting an adolescent.

• Work on setting boundaries & fostering respect while the issues are still manageable; during the puberty years (9-12y.o), while we still have our kids ears! These boundaries must extend not only to what our kids wear but also to what they watch & listen to. The best training ground is within the 8-12y.o. window! 

MEDIA MANIA

• Involved parents will take the time to experience media WITH their children; it’s simply irresponsible to abandon your kids to the TV or radio, etc, without paying attention to what’s going into their brains, or further, how their processing it & transferring that image/understanding into their own lives/relationships, etc. Just as impacting & damaging as gratuitous sex & violence, are the false notions of love & romance that so many so-called ‘reality’ shows promote.

• A study by The Kaiser Family Foundation found that ‘68% of all TV shows include sexual content (up form 56% in the late 90’s). The shows airing in prime time are even more likely to include sexual content. For example shows like Neighbours, &, Home & Away, that promote teen relationships as the ‘norm’.

• To talk openly with your pubescent, you will need to familiarize yourself with what your teens gets exposed to daily; know the magazines they’re reading, the radio they listen to, the movies they watch, the books they read; know what you’re up against. Beware of movie ratings also!  Much of your influence will be determined on the track record you’ve built with your kids to-date! But, it’s never to late to build!

• Enable your kids to take responsibility for themselves, in the things they watch, listen to, give their attention to, esp. in your absence!

PUPPY-LOVE PRESSURE

• Puppy Love is the first feeling that you ‘like’ someone & that someone ‘likes’ you- someone other than mum & dad & family. A kid who is deeply loved by his parents probably isn’t going to stumble, because of the sea of love & support that surrounds him!

• Be aware of ‘puppy-love’ & it’s reality, but be careful not to ascribe adolescent thinking to a pubescent’s feeling. Puppy-Love is a natural part of maturation, because puberty brings kids a growing awareness of the opposite sex. Adults may ask questions such as ‘do u have a boyfriend of a girlfriend?’ but this is not recommended as it encourages the whole process of waking up a child’s body & interest before it’s safe; their bodies will take care of that all on their own, & the questions can be answered in time.

• Take the process of Puppu-Love pressure in your stride. Don’t overreact! Enjoy & embrace the teachable moments it unveils. For example, find out what ‘going together’ means to your child if it comes up, rather than jumping to conclusions or being on the defensive. Encourage the friendship & liking everyone. Be careful not to judge others based on your family/belief preferences!

• You can ease the pressure related to Puppy-Love by guiding your child to healthy, encouraging, safe relationships & settings.

 FRIENDS

•  Be aware of the importance of making the often necessary, & usually inconvenient, trip to cater for your child’s ‘play-date’ request at times. By way of your actions your putting a premium on your child, & her friendships: you’re letting her know you care about her, & her friendships. But, maintain balance!

• Your house is a home not a hotel! Make your home a centre for your kids’ activities. Ensure they prefer being at home with their friends, because you accommodate their friends!

• Instill in your kids the reality of friendships; many people may claim to be your friend, but only a few are really going to stick by you!

SEIZE THE DAY, NOT THE REINS

•  ‘Hover’ parents tend to over-control & over-parent their kids. They tend to act more as dictators. If you tend to hover over your child & become an authoritarian parent who makes all the decisions for your child you may be setting the stage for serious rebellion. A pubescent needs room to grow; an adolescent needs even more! Let the reins loose slowly while you have some influence, rather than being faced with the adolescent who forces the boundaries & makes radical mistakes accordingly. The art of parenting is a subtle one: you must gradually, in the right proportion, loosen your hold on the reins & let your child begin to run! Develop age-appropriate BOUNDARIES! For example. They can choose their activities, but you limit the amount of time they’re away; they can choose their clothing, but you can veto inappropriate outfits; they can listen to certain music, but you can veto anything based on its lyrics. Boundaries are healthy; but narrow, straight lines without any turns are unhealthy. Set boundaries that require both parental guidance & the personal freedom to exercise some responsibility.

•  BOOK : Boundaries with Kids: When to say yes, when to say no to help your children gain control of their lives. Cloud & Townsend) -available at Koorong

• Authoratative v’s authoritarian. One who stays in healthy authority over one who bellows out demands. God has placed u as a parent, in healthy authority over your children. Ephesians 6 begins, ‘Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right’.

• The pressure boiling inside your pubescent comes down to this: he wants to grow but doesn’t know the way yet: he still needs your guidance!

POSITIVE PEER PRESSURE: The Family

• It has been proved that pubescent kids will violate their own consciences to gain acceptance into a peer group. However, a kid usually only does this when he doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere else. Therefore, it is considered that the best defense against peer pressure is family belonging. Healthy kids want to fit into healthy families. They love their family & feel more concerned about doing something that would upset that bond than they are about fitting in with a group at school. They find their identity at home above all else!They desire to please you!

•  lf u want a responsible child at 16, you have to begin granting him responsibility & choices & building in accountability at ages 6,7,8. You need to identify areas of disrespect & negative attitudes NOW, & rein them in now, so that u can safely let out the reins as they grow & mature, to ensure you have done all u can to create a healthy pathway to adolescence! 

• You can also create a sense of belonging by spending time not just with immediate family, but also with extended family; grandparents, cousins, close friends, adopted family, church family. To find a sense of belonging with people who value your pubescent child for something besides how ‘sexy’ or popular or talented they are; those who value them for who they are; those who can let them know, ‘it’s good to be you,…just as you are!!!’

• Seek out those who encourage your child to be “the best version of themselves’!!!

•  Let’s choose to not curse the darkness & the negative pressures around our kids, but instead, to light a candle in the darkness & to create a sense of belonging at home! 

• BOOK: All in Night: A simple family ritual which helps parents to proactively teach & learn with their children about the things that matter. (L. Burgess)