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A Recipe for Eliminating Peer Pressure
Five principles for parents who want to raise resilient children.
Posted October 23, 2019
The bane of many parents’ existence, peer pressure, is a topic I am often asked to address. “He just got in with the wrong crowd.” “She is just under the influence of that dirt-bag boyfriend.” Or, “How can I get my child out from under the heavy influence of peer pressure?”
The most common way parents respond to the peer pressure dynamic with their children is lecturing,
“You need to care less about what others think about you. Esteem,” they tell their children, “is an inside job.”
This kind of common sense, of course, does little to reduce children’s vulnerability to negative, impactful peer influences. From drug use down to how they speak and dress, adolescents are vulnerable to fall in-line with their peers’ values.
So, what are the keys to children’s susceptibility? The solutions to helping your kids reduce the pull of peer pressure are anything but common and go to the root of the development of a child’s healthy Self. Allow me to offer the following five principles parents can adopt in their efforts to raise more resilient children.
1. We Started It.
Don’t use your feelings to modify your children’s behavior. Highlighting this principle, I often tell parents, “I am almost at the point where I tell parents not to share their feelings with their children.”
When I suggest this, I am often met with panic or strong disagreement. “When do my feelings get to matter? Shouldn’t my feelings matter?” And, “Shouldn’t I be honest and authentic with my children?”
First, I remind parents that I said almost. The reason I warn against it is because it’s rare that parents share their emotions with their children except to try to show the child whether the child is on the right or the wrong track. That is, if I am happy or proud of my child, they are doing something right. If I am upset, worried, or frustrated with my child, they are doing something wrong. We use this technique, sharing our feelings with our children, to provide guidance, because that is what was done to us. But here is the catch.
If we program our children, literally wire their brains, with the idea that what someone else feels about them (the parent is proud or upset), we train them to think that what other people think and feel about them is about them. When we do this, later they will not be able to distinguish between their parent’s voices and their peers’—it is the same energy, the same basic message.
For example, the young woman who doesn’t want to have sex with her boyfriend will question herself, because if she says no, she will feel guilty and find it difficult to resist her boyfriend’s pleas, “I love you and just want to be close—this is hurting me.” In essence, we use peer pressure on them and then complain about it when the shift in emphasis from parents to peers occurs sometime around adolescence.
There is a space for sharing feelings with children. To own our limits or our feelings can help the child realize that our feelings are not about them. While they are our feelings, we must also consider how heavily shared parental feelings or judgments weigh on our children. The space a parent occupies in the child’s mind is so heavy that it can be crushing, especially when there is a mental health issue.
Anxiety arises for the child trying to please an anxious or driven parent; depression develops when a child turns parental worry or disappointment inward. These feelings and dynamics are also present in substance abuse and other mental illnesses, but can also be present with many children even if the issues have not reached the clinical level. What a parent thinks and feels about a child becomes their inner voice, which is why they may try to quiet those voices with substances, cutting, or other anesthetizing symptoms. Children may seek out peers who have low standards as a relief from their parents.
Talk to your co-parent, a trusted friend, a therapist, or a support group about your feelings. Sort them out there, so when you are with your child, the interaction serves to support your child rather than alleviate uncomfortable feelings you may have as a parent. Our feelings are signals, and we would be wise to listen to them, but if we don’t sort them out prior to interacting with our children, they will feel the pull to take care of our feelings. This can lead to anxiety or depression, in the case of the compliant child, or acting-out, in the case of the rebellious child.
2. How Do We Raise Children to Be Healthy Adults?
I am glad you asked. First, boundaries are appropriate, and they do a lot to teach children the limits when dealing with others. Boundaries are, in fact, the edges of your Self and the limits of your comfort zone. In essence, you say, “This is what I am comfortable with, or this is what I need to feel OK in this situation.”
Boundaries are about Self-care and aren’t about teaching others lessons, but they do teach people what it is like to live with and be in a relationship with an "other." And when you state what you need, what is right for you, you show your children you are taking care of yourself, so they don’t have to carry you. You aren’t suggesting you’re right, just that you have needs.
I model it like this, “I may be old-fashioned, or crazy, or stupid. I may even be wrong. This is my best guess. In the end, this is my boundary.”
This way of talking and being with children models for them what it means to be a healthy Self. This is the same kind of thinking and being they will need to withstand the gravitational pull of peer pressure. They will need to stand in the face of judgment and risk rejection with their peers, shifting from being right or good to be a Self.
3. Teaching Right and Wrong.
Since therapy and mental health can be understood as a shift from shoulds and shouldn’ts to feelings, the way you teach a child morality is to teach them how to feel. I have worked with men who have abused women and children. And while most victims of abuse don’t abuse others, all abusers have been abused, to one extent or another. When one is abused, especially in severe cases, it is said that they are turned into an object—the objectification of another. Or to cope with the trauma of abuse, they have turned themselves into an object—a non-feeling thing. In either case, one imagines others to be fundamentally like them—the same kind of animal. So, if I am an object, then you are an object, and objects don’t feel, and empathy is lost. I wouldn’t feel guilty for hitting a rock. If this cycle of objectification is accurate, then the cure is to teach people how to feel.
In “The Journey of the Heroic Parent,” I say it this way, “When someone learns to feel their feelings, they can recognize it in others.” Then, they are inclined to kindness, generosity, and loving actions, and aren’t these the epitome of morality and a healthy way to be with Self and others in the world.
4. Share Your Struggles.
One of the exercises I suggest to parents is that they share their own struggles with current-day peer pressure. How many of us can relate to the worry about what others think of us? Do people judge us and our parenting when our children struggle or misbehave? Do I worry about competing with neighbors or with someone at work?
How hard is it for all of us to show up as our authentic Self and the risk being judged? If parents can get in touch with and share these challenges, I often find that their children give them a lecture about self-esteem. “You can’t worry about what others think of you, Mom.”
You can just sit back and listen to the wisdom pouring from your child. More importantly, if you relate to them in an honest and authentic way, they may feel seen and heard by you and less alone in the struggle to find themselves.
5. Esteem Comes from Being Seen.
Many of us spend the second half of our lives trying not to worry about what others think of us. We have limited and gradual success in overcoming shame and guilt as we find a deeper version of ourselves. There are sayings I have heard in the rooms of AA and Al-Anon, “My serenity is my responsibility,” and another that states, “What others think about me is none of my business.” If we apply these to our relationship with our children, if we take on our serenity and happiness as our own responsibility, we won’t repeat the mistakes from previous generations. We will show up as more authentic and courageous Selves, and consequently, we will be more likely to raise resilient children who are less susceptible to peers no matter their age.
I have heard many make the following observation of parents and children today, compared to previous generations: “Children of previous generations worried about what their parents thought about them. Today, parents worry about what their children think about them.”
The problem I have with this observation is that it’s the same person doing the worrying. They just grew up and had children themselves. If we think it is our job to take care of our parents’ feelings, to measure up to their idea of what it is to be a good person—that same fundamental dynamic will be at play as we’re raising our children. Our children’s feelings and ideas about us will be the way we measure ourselves.
So, in the end, the real source of healthy parenting is the healthy and healed Self of the parent. This foundation is the basis for all else, and for many, it comes after a great deal of personal work. Heroic parenting means that one has enough courage to look inward to discover the unfinished business from their own childhood.
When parents operate from the base of a strong Self, have worked through the disabling and disconnecting effects of their anxiety so they can truly see their children, they provide them with a strong internal sense that they are OK. And, in my experience, that feeling will make all the difference in the world.
