Peer Pressure | How Can You Help Your Teenager To Cope With It?

Peer Pressure – A peer is a person almost of the same age and shares similar interests and values. Peers spend most of the time together in common activities. A teenager is under peer pressure when he feels in order to be accepted he must do the same activities.

We need to understand the types of peer pressure teenagers face, causes of peer pressure, and peer pressure facts.

Also Read: Weird but effective teenage parenting skills

A teenager faces mainly two types of peer pressure:

• Positive Peer Pressure

  When a teenager is engaged in healthy and meaningful activities with his friends such as playing together, doing homework and projects together or going on a picnic, he is said to be under positive peer pressure. It is healthy for him as it helps him to improve and he learns positive things.

• Negative Peer Pressure

  When your teenager is engaged in activities with his friends which are harmful and unhealthy for him, he is under negative peer pressure. Harmful activities might be buying branded clothes and goods, the pressure to smoke or drink, take drugs or engage in sexual activities.

Parents have a common question, why our teenagers listen to their friends more than us? The answer is clear – peer group offers emotional support while a teenager is going through the growing-up process.

Teenagers want to form their own independent identity, make personal decisions and form new ideas. Peers are also going through the same phase and both share their experiences, feelings and, emotions with each other. These are a few examples of peer pressure.

Effects of Peer Pressure

A teenager who lacks self-confidence and positive values follows the crowd and bad habits, is losing interest in studies and school, has failing relationships with parents or friends, lacks supervision at home is more vulnerable to the Negative Peer Pressure.

Now the question is – how to deal with peer pressure?

Also Read: How to avoid exam stress?

8 Useful Tips to Resist Negative Peer Pressure:

1. Help your child to develop a sense of purpose of his life – What he wants to become, what he wants to achieve in his life, where he wants to see after five or ten years. Making a goal, writing it and daily working for it will keep him dedicated. Negative things will not wander around him.
2. Build a trust relationship with your child – Do not spy on him, snooping a teenager breaks trust. Discuss all the matters openly so that they can share with you everything. Spend time with them, listen to them and keep your promises.
3. Train your child to solve his own problems – Teach them to take their own decisions, show them the right way and let them walk on the path. Examine the problem together, discuss the pros and cons, list out various solutions and let him choose the best solution. Guide them from a distance.
4. Teach them to take responsibility for their action – If your child has done any mistake, let him bear the consequences. When he was doing the mistake he was independent, and responsibility comes with independence. Do not rescue him like you used to do when he was young. When he knows that later he has to take responsibility for his actions, he will make wise decisions.
5. Instill right and positive values since childhood – Children follow you rather than your advice, so lead by example. Share important and basic life values at an early age such as healthy habits, discipline, optimism, gratitude, etc. Your deeds should match your words, as your children are silent observers.
6. Build happy parent-child relationship – The more your child is happy with you, the relation will be closer. In a happy relationship, children are always willing to share things with their parents. This keeps them away from negative peer pressure.
7. Build his self-esteem – Instead of focusing on their weaknesses, focus on their strengths. It will help them to build self-confidence and self-esteem and they will not seek support from peers. Encourage them to work more on their strengths, they will feel good and fulfilled.
8. Create more opportunities to make friends – When a child is socialized and gets to interact with others, he learns to cope up with peer pressure. Teach children to handle friendship issues since childhood. They should not give in to friends at the expense of values and praise for the right decisions.

Hope you liked this peer pressure article! Have more tips to add that worked for you and your teenager to cope with peer pressure? Please share with us in the comments section below.

Also Read: How to raise a happy teenager?

Wish you a very Happy Parenting!