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What to Do When Your Teen Is Being Influenced by Negative Peer Pressure

By Denise Witmer, About.com Guide

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your teen's friends

When teens get involved in risk-taking behaviors such as drug use, truancy or other problem behaviors with a group of friends, you have a negative peer pressure issue. Parents are then faced with a dilemma. How do you handle the problem behavior and the negative peer pressure at the same time? While it isn’t an easy parenting task, you are capable of handling these issues together. Here are some tips that will help:
Talk to your teen. State clearly that you do not have a problem with their friends as people. You understand that that your teen’s friends can make mistakes – just like your teen made a mistake. But you do have a problem with the risk-taking behavior and there needs to be a change on your teen’s part and on their friend’s part in order for you to be comfortable with them hanging out again.
Open up the lines of communication with the other parents. Let them in on what is going on so that there is no miscommunication happening. Keep in mind that everyone has their own perspective, so there is no need to argue any points on who may have done what. Simply let them know that you are an involved parent and you wish to be informed if your teen is mixed up in any more harmful behaviors.
Build an action plan with your teen. Address changing the behaviors that are concerning you in the plan and allow your teen to come up with different options to these behaviors. Learn more about the problem behavior and use your discipline skills as necessary. Limit your teens unsupervised time with the friends that were involved until you feel comfortable to slowly give back more of these privileges. You will need to be more involved with your teen at this time and offer more supervised activities with their friends.
Take caution: don’t allow your teen to place all of the blame at their friend’s feet. This is an easy out and may be the way to even bigger problems for your teenager down the road. Even if your teen’s friend was 90% accountable for the misbehavior, you still need to hold your teen accountable so that he can actively deal with the problem and move on. Part of learning how to make the right choices is learning how to deal with mistakes.
Recommended Book List:

How to Say No and Keep Your Friends: Peer Pressure Reversal for Teens and Preteens
Peer Pressure: Deal with it without losing your cool

Suggested Reading

Help Your Teen Handle Peer Pressure

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Denise Witmer
Parenting Teens Guide

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