Dissolving Negative Peer Pressure
Our Culture: Paris Hilton. Pro Wrestling and Steroids. Lindsay Lohan.
It’s an unfortunate fact of life that uncooperative, sometimes hostile, bored, disinterested behavior is catching. Sometimes it can get so bad that desperate parents feel they must resort to outside sources in order to break the cycle. From Teen Options Blog:
Military teen boot camps are known for their no nonsense approach to dealing with out-of-control-teens. In many cases, boot camps are the right solution for a teen teetering on the edge of a full blown discipline problem and likely only needs a wake-up call.
Negative children, especially teens, appear to have dropped their lifelong love for you and your values in favor of something which makes all their problems worse. They may be very good or very poor students. They not only disconnect with you but with most of their peers at school.
They may be gang “wannabes.”
For Parents Fighting Gang Involvement
You may feel intimidated, confused, rejected, helpless and angry. How could they do this to you? Their gang seems all powerful. You feel weak. If you are facing a tag team within your own family they will support each other behind your back, sharing and negating everything you say. Suddenly your influence is nil. Years of effort are gone—useless. Don’t believe it.
Your child, your gift from God, is in that gang because of a need. It may be a need for power, influence, achievement, status. A negative group may help your child escape from the pain of social failure with more positive people.
If relationships outside the negative group improve, your child may prefer to leave the negative status or power group.
Peer Pressure Analysis and Combat
Study recent events which reinforce or cause the negative turn. Does Negative Ned need active listening? Do you need information? Are there biochemical causes? Is this evidence of physical growing pains?
Go into computer mode in your head: feelings are your enemy. They push you into adrenalin-driven rejection of others and stupid choices of correction. Deep breathing is essential to your health.
Pinpoint precise wrong behavior and the consequences. Deal proactively with wrong choices. Impose immediate consequences every time the wrong choice occurs. This is simple (not easy) with Stress Free Discipline. Do not attack group membership or make awful generalizations about the future.
Stay specific and impersonal in spite of their identity with poor choices. Never let them see you sweat. After all, you plus God are a majority. You have taken this to Him, right? Offer a positive course of action after prayer, Godly counsel and lots of active listening.
Stress Free Discipline can fill your child’s needs to be assertive, to have influence and to achieve. You cannot force your child to choose the positive action, but it is really hard to keep up the negative one when you show a willingness to open up, listen, and investigate mutual solutions.
Have you been withholding personal power development by not allowing your child to make some choices? We all learn by wrong ones, within reason. Remember that over-protective parenting is disastrous to personal growth. At the same time, do not let your child work together with a negative peer. Keep your contacts positive ones. I moved into a different town to remove my pre-teens from negative influences. Above all, don’t nag.
Christian Steps
Have you provided a Home Fellowship group which is real, available, and interested in your child? Your child will be more likely to leave the negative peer group if his or her need for status can be filled in a positive, God centered way. You don’t need to be watering the seeds of Truth if your child prefers to connect with a personality unlike yours. Make ways to provide that.
Negativity is so fatiguing and self-defeating your child will gradually begin to desire the relief of real, positive relationships. People usually act in line with the expectations of others.
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