Peer Pressure: Helping Your Child Best Deal with Its Power and Pull (Parenting Pre-teens and Teens Book 1)
Highlights
IT SEEMS LIKE A GOOD THING, BUT…
Our children will spend a full-time job’s worth of it in school. While there, the information, opinion, fiction, and fact which they are taught shapes their lives.
IT SEEMS LIKE A GOOD THING, BUT…
they spend this time surrounded by the influence of peers and, on top of that, spend several more hours a week outside of school with a closer group of peers. To be sure, all of that time significantly impacts our children’s lives—for good or for bad.
THE TEENAGE BRAIN
Throughout puberty, the limbic system, or pleasure center of the brain, revs into overdrive. Since this system controls feelings and emotions, our pubescent teens suddenly display an overflowing cornucopia of emotions.
THE TEENAGE BRAIN
That’s just a nicer way of saying that they are up, down, left, right, sad, happy, miserable, joyous, grumpy, and giddy all in the same hour!
THE TEENAGE BRAIN
Meanwhile, as the limbic system revs up, the pre-frontal cortex, or reasoning center of the brain, lags behind in development. This part of the brain will not fully mature until the early twenties.
THE TEENAGE BRAIN
Laurence Steinberg, an expert on brain development at Temple University.
He states, “The parts of the brain responsible for things like sensation seeking are getting turned on in big ways around the time of puberty, but the parts for exercising judgment are still maturing throughout the course of adolescence.”
THE TEENAGE BRAIN
developmentally, teens are very susceptible to a host of dangers. Walt Mueller, from the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, writes, “Teens have difficulty controlling their impulses, they lack foresight and judgment, and they are especially vulnerable to peer pressure.”
THE TEENAGE BRAIN
teens are more prone than adults to shoplift, smoke, experiment with drugs and alcohol, ignore using their seat belts, and engage in a host of risk-taking behaviors.
THE POWER AND PRESSURE OF PEERS
At this stage of development, our teens are incredibly vulnerable to peer pressure. This vulnerability is what leads to most of the dangerous situations that Mr. Mueller lists.
THE POWER AND PRESSURE OF PEERS
Our children, especially our pre-teen and teenage children, crave friendship. At these ages, our children are desperate for the ABC’s of adolescence—acceptance, belonging, and connection.
THE POWER AND PRESSURE OF PEERS
The Kaiser Foundation states that almost half of adolescents between the ages of 12-18 feel pressured into having sex.
THE POWER AND PRESSURE OF PEERS
This leads to the inevitable. Three million teens are infected by STDs every year. Meanwhile, 9% of fourteen year-olds, 18% of 15-17 year-olds, and 22% of 18-19 year-olds get pregnant every year.
THE POWER AND PRESSURE OF PEERS
When it comes to drugs, 30% of teens report being offered drugs in middle school and high school. Further, 9.5% of teens have tried some form of cocaine in their lives.4
THE POWER AND PRESSURE OF PEERS
When it comes to smoking and drinking, 3.1 million American teens smoke, while 22.2% have their first alcoholic beverage before the age of thirteen.6
A DAY IN THE LIFE
What changes our six year-old who holds our hand crossing the street into a sixteen year old who binge drinks and engages in risky sexual behavior?
The culture, the powerful sway of media, and unfiltered access to the internet are big factors. Let’s face it, our children hear musicians glorifying sex, drugs, and drinking with catchy tunes, while also seeing actors and actresses drinking, doing drugs, smoking, and having sex, all without any seeming consequences.
This surely plays a major role in the above statistics. However, the number one factor for these statistics is your children’s peers who have been greatly influenced by the culture’s messages
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Think about an average day in a teen’s life. Fifteen year-old Sarah wakes up on a Monday morning and starts getting ready for school. She does so while Mom and Dad are getting ready as well.
The family may or may not have a few minutes over breakfast together before Sarah is off to the bus. She then spends the next eight plus hours being influenced by her peers at school.
On the bus, in the hallway, in the gym, in the cafeteria, in the library, in the classroom, her peers are talking about things, suggesting things, and planning things.
Involved in an extra-curricular activity, Sarah spends another hour and a half at school with her peers. Right as dinner is coming out of the oven, she walks in her front door. She only has a few minutes to eat because homework is bulging out of her backpack and her best friend “just has to talk” to her about what some boy did in math class.
After a quick dinner and homework, our average teen gets on her cellphone with her best friend, while also grabbing her laptop to chat with that boy from math class, IM some others, and check her Facebook and Instagram accounts.
At ten p.m., Mom tells Sarah it’s time for bed. After a quick goodnight kiss, she crawls into bed and prepares to start the process all over again the next day.
THE EFFECT OF TIME TOGETHER
who would you say are the primary influencers in Sarah’s life? I doubt you would answer, “Mom and Dad.”
When my family lived in Wisconsin, my son caught the bus at 7:05 every morning. I did not see him again until I picked him up from an afterschool program around 5:00. That came to nearly ten hours a day, five days a week.
For close to fifty hours a week, he was being influenced by peers. Even though he was only in early elementary school at this time, God impressed upon me the incredible influence his little friends were having on him.
THE EFFECT OF TIME TOGETHER
The fact is that spending forty to fifty hours a week with the same group of people week after week is going to influence you and influence you deeply. Even as an adult it will do so.
THE EFFECT OF TIME TOGETHER
Temple researchers discovered that being viewed as cool “lit up” a teen’s limbic system.8
THE EFFECT OF TIME TOGETHER
This means that your teen’s peers will greatly influence how they talk and what they talk about, how they dress and style their hair, how they spend their time and money, what they think is cool or boring, what they believe and value, and certainly what they fill their hearts, minds, and souls with.
THE EFFECT OF TIME TOGETHER
That is a powerful influence. An influence so powerful, that it not only affects the teen years, but the balance of one’s life for you will become like the ones you spend time with.
THE EFFECT OF TIME TOGETHER
apostle Paul who wrote, bad company corrupts good character.9
WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO?
As our children move into the teenage years, they want freedom and independence. They want to, and need to, develop their own identity, beliefs, and values.
WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO?
When they are children, we think for them. As they move into adolescence, we think with them. We do this so that when they become adults, they will be able to think for themselves.”15
DEVELOP A STRONG RELATIONSHIP
develop a strong and healthy relationship with your children. Show an interest in their lives, in their thoughts, and in their ideas. Don’t talk at them, talk with them.
DEVELOP CLEAR BOUNDARIES
sometimes teens aren’t very talkative. There are times when if we get two words and a grunt as an answer, we feel blessed!
Nevertheless, keep the lines of communication open. Don’t be pushy, but keep going back to the well. Let your pre-teens and teens know you are interested in them and their lives.
To help open up the communication channels, I like to schedule one-on-one outings with my son. I purposely do this because when he is in the car, he’s a captive audience! I especially like to go out to eat. I don’t know what it is, but it seems teens are more talkative when food is on the table…or in their mouths.
KNOW YOUR CHILD’S FRIENDS
know who your teen’s friends are and who they spend time with. Sadly, too many parents do not know with whom their children are hanging out, talking on the phone, texting, or chatting online.
TREAT TEENS LIKE YOUNG ADULTS
We don’t need to be “gestapo-like” about it, but accountability is vital to protecting our children.
Our pre-teens and teens should know that we expect a general idea of where they will be and who they will be with. If plans change, they should give a call and let us know.
KNOW YOUR CHILD’S FRIENDS
Further, we should make a point to have our children’s friends over to our homes or over for dinner. While these friends are over, we need to talk with them.
Make a point to get to know their names and to get to know them. Introduce yourself to their parents and even have the whole family over. This knowledge will be indispensable when you need to talk to your children about their friends and the influence they have.
TREAT TEENS LIKE YOUNG ADULTS
treat your teen as a young adult. This is a delicate balance. Some parents go too far in this and treat their teen as a peer. Conversely, some parents never stop treating their teens as children.
It is important that we show our teens that we value what they have to say and offer, and their input is important to us. We may not always approve of, or agree with, these things, but we can still show that we value them.
STAY CONSISTENT
When your child is four, he wants to know why the sky is blue, how much the moon weighs, and where Chuck E. Cheese lives when he’s not working.
When your child is fourteen, he wants to know why there is so much suffering in the world, how to deal with temptation, and why he gets a funny feeling every time a cute girl walks by him.
Let your teens ask these questions, and let them try to answer. It is possible their answers may be way off. If so, engage in a discussion with your teen about other possible answers.
STAY CONSISTENT
If you don’t know the answer, admit it! State that you don’t know, but it is something you can search out together. Look at it as a journey. You must be sure to lead the way on this journey, but as your teen grows seek his or her input more and more.
STAY CONSISTENT
stay consistent with your standards and consequences
STAY CONSISTENT
Continue also to consistently enforce consequences when those standards are broken.
Consequences may change with age, but the enforcement of them should not.
STAY CONSISTENT
, when my son was eight, a spanking was an appropriate consequence for him. Now that he is a teen, it is not. Loss of privilege is what is most effective.
When in trouble, my son will sometimes ask if he can just be spanked and have it over with. Funny, he never did that when he was eight!
STAY CONSISTENT
Your teen needs to understand that negative actions always lead to negative consequences. This makes consistency the key. If your child thinks, “Well, maybe Mom will let me slide again if I do this,” that is a sign that you have been less than consistent.
STAY CONSISTENT
It is the knowledge of consistent consequences that will help steady your teen as his body and mind go through so many changes.
STAY CONSISTENT
As Walt Mueller writes, in regards to explaining and enforcing consequences, “You will provide the structure their developing brain lacks. In effect, you will become their pre-frontal cortex!”16
CONCLUSION
Stay true, and fulfill your tremendous calling as a parent. Your children, grandchildren, and beyond will all be better for it!