Teach Your Child to Choose Friends Wisely

As parents, we often worry about how much influence peers have on our child. We’ve all heard the phrase “peer pressure.” However, recent research suggests that most youth don’t feel overt pressure from their peers to use alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drugs. Youth say that the pressure to do drugs, smoke, or drink comes more from wanting to be accepted, wanting to belong, and wanting to be noticed. In other words, youth drug use often has more to do with the need for peer acceptance than an inability to “just say no” to their peers.

Children want others to like them. Sometimes the group they want to join might be drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, chewing tobacco, sniffing inhalants, smoking pot, taking LSD, using methamphetamines, smoking crack, or shooting heroin. Sometimes youth turn to alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs to overcome anxiety, change their personality, or give them courage to talk to other people.

Myth vs. Fact

Our society is flooded with messages that encourage our young people to use alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.

These messages help convince young people that they should join “the crowd.” The myth that “everyone is doing it” fuels the perception that drug use is normal. The reality is that young people consistently overestimate the numbers of their peers who use alcohol, tobacco, or illegal drugs.

Young people often say that they learn more from friends than family when they reach adolescence. But studies have found that these same adolescents would prefer to learn about a variety of important topics from their parents and other caring adults. While peer influence increases during the teen years, the influence of caring adults can remain strong if you’ve established a solid relationship during the earlier years.

Even if you can’t always be there to help her make the right choices, you can help your child develop skills to manage her need for peer acceptance in positive and productive ways. You can help your child learn how to:

• Refuse both subtle and direct offers of alcohol and drugs.
• Feel comfortable and act appropriately in social situations.
• Analyze and decipher pro-use messages (become media literate).