Coaching Your Teen to Avoid Peer Pressure

13 July 2016

Coaching Your Teen to Avoid Peer Pressure

How to Help Your Teen Deal with Peer Pressure

The music is pumping, there’s cute guys and girls hanging out and looking their coolest, and someone is passing around a joint to smoke. Your teenage son or daughter is offered the joint. What happens next?

Peer pressure shapes everything from the way people buy branded products to doing things they shouldn’t do, like trying drugs or alcohol at a party. And while there is basically nothing more influential to a 16 year-old boy than impressing his friends, you are not powerless when it comes to coaching your teen on how to stand up to peer pressure.

First, say no

It seems obvious, but the first step your teen should take when offered an illegal substance is to say no. While her friends might try belittling her or ask again, if she says no the first time it’s better than saying yes.

Make it about them, not you

If saying no once isn’t enough to dissuade someone from using peer pressure to convince your teen that they should take a puff, your teen should take the initiative to ask why someone else cares if she decides to avoid using drugs. It’s important to coach your teen that how you say this sort of thing is just as important as what you’re saying; no one wants to feel like they’re being lectured or scolded.

Let them know you don’t mind if they use

For your son to keep the situation cool and not make anyone upset, instruct him to tell his peer that he doesn’t mind if they use drugs or drink. While no one under the legal age should be using controlled substances, it’s not your son’s business what others do (with exceptions like getting behind the wheel to drive, of course). But for many teens, hearing someone tell them they won’t judge relieves them of the weight of peer pressure. It’s sort of a way for the person offering drugs to save face, in case they are only offering the drugs to look cool in front of everyone else.

Walk away

If nothing seems to be working and the only thing happening is the person offering drugs is getting upset, or everyone else in the crowd is giving your teen a hard time for “not being cool enough,” tell her to walk away. While this can be a bit dramatic, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she has just lost a group of friends (assuming these are friends worth keeping). There’s a good chance that some people in that group might respect her for standing up to peer pressure and even if they don’t show it in that moment, maybe one or two of them secretly feel the same way and will turn to her for friendship, guidance, and trust in the future.

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