Peer Pressure

While it is true that teens start spending more time with their friends and are influenced by these peers through peer pressure, parents need to remember one simple truth: your teen will never forget the values you have given him. He may not always remember to use this better judgment and peer pressure may be the reason he forgets, but these values will make it through the trials of adolescence and into his young adulthood.

Still, peer pressure is one of the tough issues parents and teenagers need to handle. Learn more about peer pressure and how to help your teen cope with it using the articles below.

The Basics of Peer Pressure

• The Difference of Negative and Positive Peer Pressure
  Peer pressure is not bad thing. We all are influenced by our peers, both negatively and positively. It helps define who we are and how we feel about subjects in our lives. It is how we chose to react to peer pressure that defines who we are as an individual.

• FAQ: What do you do when you don't like your teen's friends?
  Personal choice in friendships is a decision that the individual has to make and parents often have to respect the choices of our children as long as they are not hurting our kids in any way. Learn more in our FAQ.

• FAQ: Why do teenagers give in to peer pressure?
  Teens, like adults, are influenced by their peer group. This is normal behavior and is modeled for them by the adults around them almost every minute of every day. We all conform to the social standards set by our peer groups and our teenagers see it. Learn more in our FAQ.

• Teens Who Back Talk to Mom Could Have the Confidence it Takes to Stand Up to Peer Pressure
  A study was conducted by giving 184 seventh and eighth graders from urban and suburban populations in the Southeast, a survey about drug and alcohol use and their friendships, peers and social acceptance.

Making Your Teen Pressure Proof

• How To Encourage Positive Teen Friendships
  Everyone needs positive peer interaction. It helps maintain self-esteem, builds confidence and broadens one's perspective. Not to mention that it is enjoyable to have good friends.

• 6 Tactics to Aid Your Teen with Peer Acceptance
  In high school if you are not part of the 'in' crowd, you are basically 'out' and unpopular. Unfortunately, to become popular in one of the 'in' peer groups our teens need to act in ways that are not ways they would normally choose to act, just to fit in. Teens can get caught up in this cycle of peer acceptance and unacceptable behaviors.

• How much time with friends is enough?
  Q&A from our parenting community about friends and how much time should they spend together before peer pressure becomes negative.

• Parenting Contracts: Going Out With Friends Unsupervised
  Sometimes clear communication in discipline takes the written word. Below is a parenting contract for your personal use. Use the print button on this page to print it out. Please feel free to use as it is or make it your own.

• Teen's Friends Are a Bad Influence
  Mom seeks advice: "What do you do when your daughter is a changed person when she is with friends and spends all her free time with friends, even missing school days to do so?" Read the advice the parenting teens community gave this mom.

• Healthy Friendships for Twins
  "Friendships are an important part of a child's social development and parents[...] may assume, as I did, that multiples have an easier time with friendships; after all they have a built-in buddy. But parents of twins and more know that their children may struggle with some social issues."

When Peer Pressure Becomes a Problem

• 5 Strategies for Preteens Handling Peer Pressure When your preteen first starts middle school they may be facing real peer pressure for the first time. Experimenting with smoking, drugs and skipping school does start at this age. This is because these recently elementary school graduates want to fit in with the older crowd. Here are some things you can do to help your preteen be prepare for when they are asked to do something that they normally wouldn't do.
• What to Do When Your Teen Is Being Influenced by Negative Peer Pressure When teens get involved in risk-taking behaviors such as drug use, truancy or other problem behaviors with a group of friends, you have a negative peer pressure issue. Parents are then faced with a dilemma. How do you handle the problem behavior and the negative peer pressure at the same time? Here are some tips.

• Peers Affecting School Performance
  Tips for parents of teens who are having a hard time in school because of the peer group. Part of an extensive school related article.

• Quiz: Are You Sabotaging Your Teen's Social Life?

• Cyberbullying
  Remember the bullies in high school when we were young? Cyberbullying is a new way to bully and crops up out of our teens’ ability to connect with each other through internet social websites, email and cell phones.