Tips for Parents: Helping Teens Handle Peer Pressure

It is often said that being a teenager is hard. However, if we talk about only parents, then being a parent of a teenager is even harder. It takes a lot for parents to raise their children, especially when they enter their teen years.

When they step outside their adolescent years and become teenagers, life takes a toll on them – it drastically changes. Their physical bodies go through various hormonal changes, their friends change, their priorities change. This is the time when their need to impress others becomes more common. They get highly influenced by peer pressure – both in positive and negative ways.

Issues like peer pressure are often ignored by the parents as they are more evidently seen in younger kids. Teenagers go through a myriad of other complex issues like alcohol, sex, drugs, pornography, and bullying. Along with them, they also tend to face peer pressure as they constantly want to make a personality of their own and feel independent. As a result, they might miserably fail and face severe consequences. If parents do not intervene at the right time these issues can cause negative and life-altering consequences for the teenagers.

Though parents need to address such issues with their teenagers, tell them how to avoid such circumstances and also offer them advice for dealing with peer pressure in the real as well as online world. With the following useful tips, parents can definitely help their teens handle peer pressure effectively.

Communicate with Your Teens

The more you communicate with your teens, the more you will be able to understand about their routines, habits, as well as the relationships they’ve formed with their friends or peers. Ask them if they have ever faced peer pressure in school or online. Some children feel shy while talking about such things with their parents because they’re not being given enough space or confidence. It is advisable for parents to take their children in confidence and allow them to feel comfortable in their presence. A conversation will only be instigated when they attain a certain comfort level with their parents.

Discuss the Consequences

If you’ve developed a favorable comfort level with your teens, then you must also make them aware of the negative side of peer pressure and how it can affect their wellbeing. Your teens must know about the consequences of taking part in inappropriate activities or spending time with the wrong people and how getting influenced by some peers can alter their decisions and steer them away from their life goals.

Make them Learn to Say No

As a parent, you might have taught your children to never say no. However, this can be situational. Sometimes your teen might be tempted to give in and say yes to a friend just for the sake of not losing out on his/her friendship. In such cases, they even might do something which they’re taught to refrain home. Under such circumstances, it is your duty to make your child understand how important it is to refuse someone for their own reasons. There can be some instances where the child has to say no for his/her own good. Therefore, this should be well conveyed to the child. 

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