Positive Peer Pressure (PPP)

Positive Peer Pressure (PPP)

Believe it or not the concept exists! I hear it every once a while and I’m always pleasantly surprised. What is positive peer pressure? It’s when kids encourage their peers to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing. As a teacher, I especially like to see it happen because kids will often listen to other kids before they will listen to an adult. Adults can come across as stuffy authority figures, far removed from what it’s like to be a teenager. The key to effective PPP is in the delivery. Peers need to get the message across without sounding condescending. So often they may mean well, but their message is lost in their tone. Just today I heard a few of my students encouraging another student to refrain from disruptive behavior. So often, society is quick to point out negative peer pressure that we fail to recognize PPP. Ask yourself this question: Are my friends enabling my self-destructive behavior, or do they have the guts to call me out? Do you have the courage to confront your friends when they are messing up their life? What if you don’t say anything and you later find out that they were seriously hurt or died because you failed to act? No one needs that kind of guilt on their conscience. One thing I have learned from teaching kids is that positivity can be just as contagious as negativity if you give it a chance.

Peer Pressure

Peer Pressure
Why can't I do it? Everybody else is doing it. This sounds so familiar to me, I hear this all the time from the families and adolescence I work with. I really try hard not to fall into the trap and respond with, “if they were jumping off a cliff would you do it?" I hated that response growing up. So as teachers, what can we do instead?
One way I think that would help is to have open honest non-judgmental communication. When a child ask or wants to be a part of something dangerous we can explain the dangers. Also, we can use I feel statements to explain how we feel about them doing that particular activity. Another example would be to explain the pressures we felt in similar situations growing up and how we handled it. This would help them not feel so alone and that we as adults are not that different. We could always relate how we handle social pressures by our peers. In doing this they will hopefully make the right choice. In doing so they may gain a stronger sense of self.

Brian Wildason