Action Steps To Help Your Children Cope With Peer Pressure and the Need for Peer Acceptance

1. Establish the clear message that you, as a caring adult, do not want them to use alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. Parents, grandparents, elders, aunts and uncles, foster parents, guardians, mentors, and others can play a strong role to help young people face pressures to use alcohol and drugs. In fact, the most common reason that young people give for not using alcohol and drugs is not wanting to harm the relationship between themselves and the caring adults in their lives.

2. Help your child practice resisting peer pressure. For young people, most peer pressure is just as subtle as it is for most adults. For example, let's say you just started a low-fat diet and you've been at a friend's home for a party. They've been eating chips and dip, but you've resisted. Now, it's time to leave and, as you drive home with your neighbor, she says, “Hey, let's stop off at the pizza place down the block.” You mutter something about being on a diet and she says, “Oh come on, just one piece of pizza won't kill you.” This is peer pressure, and it's the same as what a child experiences when a slightly older pal suggests just taking a “little” hit of a marijuana cigarette because he knows the younger friend really doesn't want to do drugs.

This is why practicing peer pressure resistance is important. Finding creative ways to refuse alcohol, tobacco, and drugs requires humor and lots of practice. Children, especially younger children, love to pretend. So set a scene as if you and your child were characters in a story. Roleplay saying no to things that your child knows are harmful or against the rules, such as playing with matches, stealing a cookie, or smoking a cigarette.

This cannot be a one-time session. You might find, for instance, that a 10-year-old has no trouble at all saying no to trying a beer at a neighbor's house. However, 3 years later, when the 17-year-old next door asks him if he wants a beer, you hear him hesitate—not as sure of his convictions at 13 as he was at 10.

3. Help your child feel comfortable in social situations. A basic course in social skills often helps here. Again it's a matter of practice. Young people want to be socially accepted. So if being socially accepted means eating with a knife and fork instead of with one's hands, then that's what kids want to learn.

Practice meeting and greeting people with your child. Find some sentences that help her “break the ice.” Teach your child how to ask questions about others and to be a good listener.

Again, you can get lots of input from your child. Ask her to describe times when she has felt uncomfortable. Tell her about a situation in which you felt awkward. See if she has ideas about how to act in the same situation in the future. Let her know that social situations often are awkward at first and that they are not very easy for most people. Ask her about her experiences.

Let your child know that some people may turn to alcohol and drugs to get them through awkward social moments, and they never learn how to be comfortable in social situations. Let your child know that it's okay to feel awkward at times. We all do!

4. Teach your child to analyze media messages. Many of the media messages about alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs present glamorous images, lure with T-shirts and trinkets, and play upon the desire to be popular and physically attractive. These messages often ignore the risks associated with alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use. The need for group acceptance and peer approval is high during adolescence, and media images often influence youth's determination of what attitudes, behaviors, and actions are socially “normal” or desirable. Media-literate individuals are better able to make informed choices and form opinions based on facts rather than “hype.”

Help youth think for themselves and resist the many powerful media messages about drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. Help them analyze media messages, understand the intent of the messages, and evaluate how the information in the message is used and communicated in a variety of media—television, movies, videos, radio, and in music. These skills are especially important to young people. After all, they're exposed to an average of 5.5 hours of media each day!

Children can help develop their own set of “turn down” comments, but it's your job to help them practice so that they are not thrown off balance if the offer is more subtle or more forceful than anticipated.

A lot will depend on the age and personality of your child. The most important thing is to make sure she's comfortable with what she wants to say. Your job is to coach her to use language and phrases of her own.

For instance:

A shy child might want to say, “No, thanks,” or “I gotta go,” and then walk away quickly.

A more outgoing child might say, “What? Are you talking to me? Forget it,” or “No, I don't do drugs.”

Children who have difficulty refusing offers from older kids or adults may need special help to practice a forceful, believable reason that clearly lets the other party know that they do not want to use alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.

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