Dealing with the Bad Influences in Your Teen's Life

By Meghan Vivo

Your once well-behaved teen has started getting into trouble and you don’t know who to blame - is it the influence of their favorite celebrity? Or perhaps that risqué television show or foul-mouthed rapper they spend so many hours listening to? More likely, a sudden change in behavior, dress or attitude can be traced to the friends your teen is hanging out with.

Adolescents are heavily influenced by the opinions of their peers, says Marty Ormond, program director at Turn-About Ranch, a residential treatment center for teens ages 13 to 17 that is located on a real horse and cattle ranch.

“Humans need to be connected with other humans,” he says. “When teens see a group, they gravitate toward that group and shift their behavior, whether positive or negative, in order to be accepted.”

Studies confirm that peers have a strong influence on adolescents, which can be extremely healthy (in the case of a positive peer group), or extremely unhealthy (in the case of a negative peer group).

In a study conducted by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, researchers found that teens were more likely to engage in aggressive and risky behaviors if they believed they were in a chat room with popular, well-liked teens who endorsed those behaviors. The teens so deeply internalized these risky attitudes that they maintained them even when the popular teens weren’t watching.

The study, published in the journal Child Development, also found that teens who were afraid others wouldn’t like them were more vulnerable to peer influence. The researchers concluded that the best way to address risky behavior is to change the teens’ perceptions of the attitudes of their peers, or to form a positive peer group that endorses healthy behaviors.

Overcoming Peer Pressure

Chances are you’ve already seen the power of peer pressure in your teenager’s life. So what can you do to protect your teen from bad influences?

Get to Know Your Teen’s Friends. Whenever possible, meet your teen’s friends and their parents, and watch how your teen behaves in the company of these friends. Does your daughter act like the girl you know or is she putting up a tough exterior? Has your son changed the way he dresses or acts to mold to these friends? Talk about why your teen is attracted to these particular friends and how your child decides whether a person is “good” for them.

Experts also recommend that you make sure you know where your teen is going and who they are going with, and call the parent or adult in charge to confirm plans. When your teen knows that you will check in with the other parents, they’re less likely to make plans that can’t be corroborated.

Because many parents don’t know all of their teen’s friends, the staff at Turn-About Ranch encourages students to create a list of “green light” friends (those who are positive influences), “red light” friends (those who are negative influences) and “yellow light” friends (those who they aren’t sure of yet). This way, parents know how to respond when their teen asks to spend time with someone who is a bad influence.

Create a Family Contract. One tool the staff at Turn-About Ranch uses to help families overcome negative peer influences is family contracts. The contract, which is put in place before the student goes home, lays out the general expectations around issues like peer contact.

For example, parents might decide that their teen shouldn’t have any peer contact for the first two weeks after they return home. As the teen proves their trustworthiness, parents can gradually increase the amount of time their teen spends with friends, first requiring visits to be supervised by a parent and slowly incorporating time to talk on the phone with friends and meet up outside of the home.

Find a Positive Peer Group. Bad influences persuade your teen to engage in risky behaviors, but peer pressure also works the other way. Finding a positive peer group will encourage your teen to imitate healthy behaviors, such as friendly competition for good grades, being there for a friend in need or getting into a good college.

Find out what types of clubs, sports and extracurricular activities are offered at your teen’s school and encourage them to get involved. Kids who participate in these types of activities tend to be more driven academically and are seeking healthy friendships.

Build Your Teen’s Confidence. Establishing rules, rewarding good behavior and enforcing consequences for negative behavior allow you to support your teen when they are doing well. Praise, positive reinforcement and taking an interest in who your child is will remind them that you love and accept them.

Peer influences can’t be underestimated, advises Ormond. When the pressure is on and the most important thing to a teen - social approval - is at stake, even the brightest, most well-behaved teen can make a poor decision.

“Parents need to understand that negative peers sometimes beat other teens down emotionally until they give in,” says Ormond. “It is our job, as parents and caregivers, to build teens’ strength so they can resist those pressures.”

Get Help. Parents can become overwhelmed by the influence other teens are having on their child. After all, you’re only one or two people against a whole crowd of teens that spends every day at school with your child and determines your child’s social standing. Sometimes parents need to get help, often by removing their child from the negative influences until they are strong enough to stand up for themselves.

Turn-About Ranch uses a level system to promote leadership skills and the ability of teens to hold themselves and others accountable. At the same time, the staff provides therapy and parenting classes to families so they can support the hard work their child is doing and help ensure they don’t fall prey to peer pressure again.

“The goal of the staff at Turn-About Ranch is to make the students feel comfortable with their feelings, choices and who they are so they don’t need acceptance from others,” says Ormond. “By the time they go home, they are more confident and emotionally healthy so they don’t rely on a negative peer for their self-worth.”

When students return home from the ranch, peer relationships are the primary trigger for a return to risky behaviors. For this reason, Turn-About Ranch provides a “crash course” in dealing with peer pressure so teens don’t get sucked back into bad influences when they go home, explains Jeanne Fry, LCSW, ACSW, a therapist at the ranch.

“If teens can hold true to what they know is right and hold each other accountable for their actions even in an environment as intense as Turn-About Ranch, where students live, work and go to school with each other seven days a week and can’t just walk away if there’s a disagreement, they’ll have had good practice for dealing with peer pressure when leave they this environment,” says Fry.

Turn-About Ranch gives teens the opportunity to slow down, rethink their choices and get back to their core values - integrity, respect, accountability, cooperation and compassion - free from negative influences and the pressure to fit in. On the ranch, teens learn to stand up for what is right, even when it isn’t the easy thing to do.

“It takes a lot of courage for a teen to step up as a leader,” notes Fry. “They become more visible, more of a target for jealous peers and have more expected of them. But those who have the secure sense of self required to step into a leadership role will reap the rewards of greater self-esteem and more fulfilling relationships.”

You may not be able to choose your teen’s friends, but they are counting on you to relieve some of the peer pressure they’re likely confronting at school. A strong, confident teen who knows they have the support of their parents is best equipped to make the right choices, even if it means sacrificing their popularity.