Teenagers And Peer Pressure
All teenagers desire to be popular and be known for something even when such desires can lead them down the wrong path.
Being a teenager comes with greater challengers from friends, and peers. It is a stage where the teenage is placed with the choice to make decisions that seems hard and even more harder when being pressured by peers.
Peers have greater influence on teenagers exerting pressure on them to make certain decision that may at the end expose them to danger. Peers influence one’s life even without knowing by spending quality time with them. You learn from them and they learn from you.
It is mostly said that bad things are easily learnt by teens than the good ones. Most teens get into peer pressure because they want to be popular, they want to fit into a group, they want to be liked or because they are scared of being mocked by other kids.
The idea of “everyone is doing it” has made so many teenagers involve themselves in different practices that caused lots of damage in their lives.
As a child moves to the teenage stage, his/her thought is filled with trying to be independent, finding out their self-identity, and trying to do things the way they feel is beneficiary to them.
Most female girls get exposed to indecent dressing due to peers, they want to be like the crowd and others are exposed to premarital sex which most time causes incurable diseases and loss of lives.
In some cases, young female teens are being harassed by grown up men telling them to indulge in sexual practices simply because other teens are doing it.
Likewise to the boys, they indulge in cultism because of pressure from friends and peer groups. Some do it for security reasons or to avoid being bullied by other boys. Most young teen boys endanger their lives by taking harmful drugs that damages their system.
Every parent is expected to show her child the right things of life before an outsider teaches them the wrong values of life.
Every parent needs to checkmate the activities of their wards to know what is going on in their lives, check the kind of peer they interact with and the activities they do when they are alone thereby educating them about the risks of taking inappropriate actions.
It is high time for parents to eradicate a friendly environment for their kids to enable them share their problems with them.
Being excessively rude to your ward pushes them away to more danger. Be your wards confidant and eradicate a friendly home with them.
Note: Don’t be a parent that when the child messes up, the child’s first thought is “mummy is going to kill me” but be one that when things goes wrong, the child’s first though should be “let me call my parents”.
Your relationship with your child can help fight peer pressure.