Help Your Child Make Healthy Decisions Based on Self-Choice

At some point in the middle or high school years, most every child is going to wrestle with peer pressure and confront those three dreaded little words: “Everyone’s doing it.”

The “it” may be most anything, from wearing makeup or getting a smartphone to cheating, trying pot or having sex.

But whether or not your child succumbs to negative pressure—because, indeed, not all peer pressure is bad—from friends and acquaintances depends upon a host of variables. While parents can’t control all those factors and probably won’t be around in the heat of the moment, they can give their children skills in how to navigate this rocky stretch of childhood.

Parenting experts agree that listening to children, not talking at them, is key, as is teaching them how to problem solve so that they can handle challenging scenario on their own.

“Parents need to know that sitting down and giving a child a long lecture about the dangers of smoking, or whatever they’re doing, isn’t going to change that behavior,” says Myrna B. Shure, professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Drexel University in Philadelphia and the author of several books including “Thinking Parent, Thinking Child: How to Turn Your Most Challenging Everyday Problems into Solutions.”

“What is going to change the behavior is that the child is the problem solver, and we need to give the child the skills to do that at a very early age.”

By // Gremlyn Bradley-Waddell

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