Tag Archive for: peer pressure

Peer pressure

How To Deal With Peer Pressure

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Strategies to teach your child to manage pressures within their peer group 

Being a child can be challenging as you deal with navigating choices about friends, social appropriateness, and ways to feel accepted. Children are confronted with a number of messages about the world through their parents, their friends, and the media and at times it can be tough coordinating choices that satisfy all three sources. How can we teach our children to manage social pressures that they know are incorrect or can elicit negative feedback or consequences?

1) Work with your child on creating value system. When a child knows their values and sets of expectations, it becomes clear what choices would align and what choices would counteract their value system. When we make choices in line with our value system, we feel good about our decisions and can anticipate positive feedback or praise. If we make decisions that go against our core values, we experience consequences or negative feedback. For instance, if it is within a child’s value system to treat others with respect, it might feel strange for them to follow a friend’s advice to talk back to a teacher.

2) Teach assertive communication. Children may feel uncomfortable communicating their needs effectively to their peers out of fear that they may be seen as aggressive or mean. Instead, assertive communication projects a firm boundary in a calm tone. Assertive communication looks like:

“Please stop, I do not like that.”

The message is clearly stated in a non-threatening and calm tone. It is expressing a need and should not risk an overtly, escalated response from a peer. If a child were to yell this message or say it in a mean tone, the message changes and can appear aggressive. As long as the child remains calm and reasserts their message, appropriate reactions from others will ensue. Encourage your child to practice assertive communication with you when they are not happy with a directive in lieu of yelling or experiencing a large, upset reaction.

3) Work with your child on identifying positive qualities that they look for in friends. In this conversation, help your child come up with at least 5 traits that are important in having a friend so as to separate those who do not fit this mold. This will help your child decipher between peers vs. friends and how to choose individuals to spend their time with who embody traits that make them feel comfortable.

Choosing The Right Friends: Supporting your Child’s Resiliency Against Peer Pressure

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The older they get, the more independent they get. For adolescents, the world revolves around the friendship circle. While you can’t choose friends for your children, you can teach them how to choose wisely.  Some parents don’t get involved until it’s too late, when they desperately want their children to stop hanging out with bad influences. This may be accomplished, but the problem may return when the child meets someone similar. It’s more valuable to teach children about what a good friend means, rather than seek control over each individual peer of choice. You can start by asking your children to make a list of qualities that make up a “good friend” and helping them think about it objectively.

teenage friends standing outside

When discussing specific peers in their life, you can use the following questions as a screener:

Good Friend Checklist

  • Are you able to be yourself around them?
  • Do they make you feel good about yourself?
  • Do you have interests and hobbies in common?
  • Do you take turns being leader and follower?
  • Would you stand up for each other?
  • Do they want to help you when you’re upset?
  • Do they listen when you need to talk about your feelings?
  • Do they respect you when you say “no”?
  • Can you work it out together when you have a fight?

If most of the answers are “yes”, the friendship is likely to be a positive one and hopefully boosts self-esteem. If most of the answers are “no”, the friendship could lead to insecurity and poor decision-making and should be re-considered.  The “no” answers can also help identify which skills may need to be taught or strengthened.

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When Friends Are A Bad Influence on Your Children | Pediatric Therapy Tv

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In today’s webisode a Licensed Professional Counselor provides tips on what to do if our children are influenced badly outside of the home setting.

 In this video you will learn:

  • When a parent should discuss bad influences with the child
  • How to best approach the bad influence situation
  • What is the best way for the child to handle the situation

Video Transcription:

Announcer: From Chicago’s leading experts in pediatrics to a worldwide
audience, this is Pediatric Therapy TV, where we provide experience and
innovation to maximize your child’s potential. Now, your host, here’s
Robyn.

Robyn: Hello, and welcome to Pediatric Therapy TV. I’m your host Robyn
Ackerman, and today I’m standing here with Marnie Ehrenberg, a
licensed professional counselor. Marnie, can you give us some
advice on what to do when our children are hanging out with bad
influences?

Marnie: Sure. I think it’s a topic that comes up a lot across the age
groups, and I think it kind of depends on the age, but for older
kids, I think that your first step should not be to say, “You
can’t hang out with that person.” I think that that makes that
person really desirable. I think that talking to your kids about
how to make good decisions is really important, and as well as
reinforcing that you have your own family rules, and if another
person they want to hang out with doesn’t follow those kinds of
rules or jeopardizes that, that they need to learn how to say no
and how to end it.

I think giving them a chance to be able to make those decisions
on their own and see if they break any rules is important. And
then at that point, then you can decide if you’re at the point
where you’re going to forbid them to see somebody. But I think
it’s important to talk about how your family works and how other
families work and keep that integrity in your home.

Robyn: All right. Thank you so much, Marnie. And thank you to our
viewers, and remember, keep on blossoming.

Announcer: This has been Pediatric Therapy TV, where we bring peace of
mind to your family with the best in educational programming. To
subscribe to our broadcast, read our blogs, or learn more, visit
our website at LearnMore.me. That’s LearnMore.me.