Insights for Parents:
Teaching Teenagers to Resist Social Pressure

I used to have a sign in my office that mocked the simplistic and ineffective government-sanctioned approach of the 1980s to teaching children how to resist involvement in drugs and sex. The sign read, "'Just say no!' has done for drug abusers what 'Have a nice day!' has done for chronic depressives."

There are good reasons for my cynicism about that Reagan-era dictum, just as there are good reasons to take very seriously the issues those approaches tried to take on. One of the most difficult tasks of childhood is learning how to resist social pressure. The challenges to teenagers come from many directions: a dare to shoplift an article of clothing, an invitation to use an illegal drug, a demand for sexual intimacy, an offer to join a gang.

Resisting such pressure is more complex than it appears. It requires that adolescents think about the possible consequences of their behavior, and that they feel emotionally strong enough to risk rejection by a peer or friend. It also requires a sense of empathy for the person applying the pressure, and the ability and self-confidence to propose different behaviors.

Researchers who have studied how children respond to social pressures of all types have found that some are more likely than other to cave in. At particular risk are children who feel few emotional ties to their families. If a child is lonely and isolated, and a group comes along that offers membership and a sense of affiliation, the child may welcome that, even if the group is a gang or a cult.

An adolescent whose parents are domineering is also at risk for being manipulated, even thought he parents often think their behavior inoculates the child against getting into trouble. In other words, a certain amount of rebellion is a good thing. Children who feel intimidated by their parents and unwilling to question them are more likely to take that same approach when faced by a seemingly powerful peer. But if the child has had practice in making his own decisions and anticipating the consequences of those decisions, he’ll be better prepared to do the same when he’s told by a peer to do something potentially dangerous.

Learning to respond to social pressure is a skill that is separate from moral values and personal philosophies. Like other skills, it’s sharpened more through coaching and practice than through dogma. Simply telling a teenager "Just say no!" or explaining the reasons why she should wait a few years before becoming sexually intimate doesn’t go far enough.

Such simplistic approaches ignore the social pressure felt by teenagers and younger children, and do not give them a way of maintaining social relationships while refusing to give in. A child who can respond to a friend’s invitation to get drunk with a simple counteroffer to go to a movie is more likely not only to avoid problems with alcohol, but also to maintain the friendship.

Simply saying no is seldom enough to get a child out of this type of situation, especially if the social pressure is coming from a friend or someone your child would like to have as a friend. Remember that friendship and peer relationships become much more important at this age. A child who does not feel that she can maintain a friendship without engaging in some type of risky or illegal behavior will be highly tempted.

Another significant problem with the "Just say no!" approach and others like it is that they imply that someone who says yes even once is a bad person. Teenagers need to feel that just because they tried a drug or a sexual activity once doesn’t mean that they can’t say no the next time. There’s evidence that a significant number of adolescents who try certain illegal drugs stop after one or two experiences.

So how do you help your teen or preteen develop strong decision-making skills? A good first step is to talk about some of the decisions you made as an adolescent, and to share some of the ones you’re making as an adult. Instead of doing this as a one-shot formal lecture—something many teenagers will rightfully resist—weave these discussions into your daily conversations.

Think through some of your current decisions out loud, evaluating the short-term and long-term pros and cons. Help your child see how you weigh the alternatives.

Here are some other suggestions:

• Give children practice making decisions. With young children this can be as simple as choosing which cereal to eat for breakfast, what clothes to wear, and which baseball cards to trade. For teenagers, the decisions should be both more complex and more important. Remember that the process of making a decision and being responsible for its outcome is much more important than the choice itself.
  
  
• When you talk to your children about how they make specific ordinary decisions, don’t turn the conversation into an inquisition or criticism, especially if you disagree with their choices. That will cause them to stop listening. Remember that your goal is to help your children get better at thinking through alternatives.
  
  
• Do some role-playing with a group of children and perhaps their parents. Act out some skits with your children that involve real-life situations in which they have to make a choice. What should you do if someone dares you to ride on the back bumper of a bus? What if you haven’t finished your homework and someone you really like asks you to go to the movies? What if someone offers you an alcoholic drink or some drugs at a party? Does it matter if it’s a stranger or a friend? What if a boy says he’ll spread rumors about you at school if you don’t have sex with him?
  
  Have the children try solving these problems in different ways to see what the responses might be. Then they can talk about whether their responses sounded phony or effective. Although younger teenagers sometimes feel comfortable doing this at home, older teens often prefer to try role-playing at school or in an after-school group, and with adults other than their parents.
  
  There’s a variation of this that I’ve tried that works very well. During 1998 some teenage professional actors from the Nickelodeon Channel and I went on a national tour of middle schools on behalf of Philips Consumer Communications. We ran workshops for young teenagers on improving parent-child communication. As part of the workshop, we had some of the teenagers from the schools play the role of a parent responding to a child’s inappropriate request or behavior.
  
  It was fascinating. These kids, who were untrained as actors, suddenly became their parents in front of our eyes. They had the speech mannerisms down pat. They had the rhythm. They had clearly heard all the things their parents had been telling them, even if they didn’t act that way. You might want to try something similar, in which the teens in your group play the roles of the parents, and perhaps the parents play the teenagers.
  
  
• Finally, expect children to make some bad decisions. That is, after all, why you’re trying to give them lots of practice—especially in situations that don’t have severe or long-term negative consequences. Sometimes they can learn more by recovering from their mistakes than by making the right decision the first time.