Who said children suffer from peer pressure?

Children don’t nearly suffer as much as we do. It all begins with the infant. Our friend comes
over with their twelve year old child and makes seemingly stray comments on what her child was doing
when he was our child’s age. Of course our child isn’t doing any of the things mentioned. Although our
child is older.

It doesn’t stop with personal feats in childhood. This continues right into their teen years, and
often even into young adult years. Parents feel pressure to send their teens to schools that others are
sending their teens to; we feel pressure to give our teen things we know they don’t deserve. The list
goes on and on, and we too often succumb to the list that are put before us. Our peer pressure has a
fancy title, “Keeping up with the Joneses.”

Not one of us would admit to this poor behavior, but as soon as our friend leaves we find
ourselves wondering about the latest thing they bought, trying to encourage our teen to be like their
teen. Getting frustrated over our teen’s “inadequacies,” and we may experience a generalized
dissatisfaction about our own lives.

We model for our teens how to poorly handle peer pressure by succumbing to society’s
unbalanced expectations. Too often we don’t see our poor behavior, but we quickly call out our teens
on their poor management of peer pressure. Without realizing it we teach our teens that they are
supposed to have what other people have. We teach them that they are supposed to do what others do.

Of course this isn’t what we set out to teach our teens, but it happens. We have to extricate
ourselves out of this situation. Ignore the Joneses and all of their fantastic accomplishments. If we
accept ourselves as we are, it will be easier to accept our teens as they are.