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Home › Articles › Back to School Headquarters › Peer Pressure Pointers

Peer Pressure Pointers

How Parents Can Make a Difference

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Peer pressure can make the preteen and adolescent years even more difficult as a young person struggles to move from child to adult. As pressure mounts, parents can make a profound impact on their children by encouraging self-confidence and individuality, according to Liza Bonin, clinical psychologist in the Learning Support Center at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas.

Bonin, who also is an assistant professor in pediatrics and psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, offers these pointers for parents:

  • Work to keep the parent-child relationship strong so your child will be more likely to turn to you with problems and value your opinions.
  • Keep lines of communication open. Refrain from criticizing your child's friends and peers. Listen attentively and reserve judgment.
  • Empathize with your child. Show that you know how it feels to want to be accepted by others.
  • Don't solve your child's problems. Help them develop problem-solving skills so they can discover their own solutions.

Being Involved May Help Them Avoid Smoking

How can you help your children fight peer pressure to smoke? A study says that being involved in their lives – knowing about their friends, activities and how they're doing in school – can help them overcome peer pressure to start smoking.

The study, which appears in Prevention Science, also confirmed two earlier findings. First, that children who are socially competent – who have the ability to exercise self-control and good judgment – and who have parents who monitor their behavior tend not to start smoking. Second, that the more widespread children think smoking is, the more likely they are to start.

While researchers have known that both peers and parents play an important role in whether young teens and preteens start smoking, they've known less about whether the effects of peer influence on starting smoking is affected by other factors, such as parents' involvement, children's adjustment to school and their degree of social competence.

Researchers surveyed more than 1000 students at four middle schools for the study.


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