You hear the words “peer pressure” and immediately assume the worst, don’t you? Peer pressure means your kids are doing drugs, drinking or carrying on in other ways that give parents fits.
The truth is that there are different types of peer pressure, and some of it is good, just as there are positive effects of television. If Gossip Girl and MTV are the bad peer pressure, then the Travel Channel and Dancing with the Stars represent good peer pressure. The delivery mechanism may be the same, but the message is quite different.
One example of positive peer pressure is a varsity sports team. To be eligible to play, students need to maintain good grades and stay off drugs. In a healthy school environment, the players support each other to meet these goals, because they don’t want teammates sitting on the bench over a failing grade. This continues at the collegiate level in some cases; Georgia Tech football players can earn “Dawg Bones” stickers for their helmets for academic achievements as well as athletic ones.
Most parents wouldn’t mind if an abstinence ring became a popular fashion accessory at school, or if kids banded together to stop certain types of bullying. Parents need to keep their eyes open in these cases, though, because peer pressure to bully can easily become the norm, or one group of kids can target another over those abstinence rings.
When kids are out of the house, they’re on their own in a world that sends mixed messages about proper behavior. Encouraging positive peer pressure can help kids to tune out those negative messages. You might even get lucky, and have the kids decide that Gossip Girl isn’t cool to watch.
I think if kids can find good role models, that helps a lot with peer pressure.