Teaching Your Child to Avoid Peer Pressure

Peer pressure is something that most of us have felt to some capacity, whether as children or now as adults. We’re social creatures and value others’ opinions, especially so earlier on in life as teenagers. This can either have a positive or negative effect on children. If they are around the wrong crowd, they may be influenced to do things that they may not necessarily want to do and fall into destructive behaviours. On the other hand, being around positive forces can encourage children to strive for better and achieve more in their studies. With regard to avoiding negative peer pressure, we have a number of tips that you can use to help your child.

Raise Them to Be Confident

Confidence and self-belief are like a shield. If your child is confident and accepting of their flaws, it will be a pretty difficult job for anyone to get in the way of that and exploit their vulnerabilities. Something that bullies and those that use peer pressure do. Also, if they are confident in themselves, they will not feel the need to seek validation from others and fall into peer pressure in order to please them.

How To Say No

While it’s a small and easy word to say, it can be rather difficult to use. For some children, it might feel uncomfortable to say no to their friends as they may just want to keep them happy and avoid any potential confrontation. Teaching your child how to will help them in establishing boundaries and not fall victim to peer pressure. A way that you can do this is through role play. With practice, they will become more comfortable and confident in doing so.

Recognising What It Looks Like

You can also use role play to help your child recognise when peer pressure is taking place. It can bring light to important issues that they should be aware of and create a line of conversation for you to discuss them together. 

Stop and Think

It’s okay to pause and think about things. Sometimes we need time to fully digest the information that we’re given and make the right decisions for ourselves. Teaching your child to do this will help them to evaluate the options that they’re given in life and avoid those that are potentially harmful to them.