HEALTH PLUS:Research shows teens secretly love parents to set limits, have rules and monitor them, writes MARIE MURRAY.
WHILE PARENTS wish their children to have friends of their own age and to be part of their peer group, they also worry about the potential negative influence of the adolescent clique or gang.
Studies show that parents who are in warm relationships with their children have little to fear in this respect, because young people who are close to their parents bring courage, resilience, strength and psychological protection to their peer group relationships.
But when there are difficulties at home, that is when the young person is more likely to turn to the peer group for support and more likely to choose the least positive group.
Peer influence dominates if the adolescent perceives lack of interest, time, attention or affection at home. In situations of marital discord, separation and divorce, adolescents can feel betrayed by adults, lose their trust in them and turn to the gang for consolation. This is especially so in late childhood and early adolescence when the young person is most vulnerable to peer influence.
Negative peer influences can lead the young person into dangerous situations. They may encourage the young person to challenge and dismiss parental views, introduce the young adolescent to alcohol, cigarettes or illegal substances and persuade the adolescent to join in risk-taking activities such as shoplifting, joyriding or other delinquent acts.
Additionally, while the adolescent may need the support of the peer group, negative peer groups can also be cruel, bullying, challenging and demanding and the young people can feel torn between what is demanded in order to remain in the group and the isolation of exclusion if they do not engage in acts which they do not want to participate in. This is an exceptionally difficult and dangerous position for a young person to be in.
The negative peer group can invite or coerce the young person into premature sexual behaviour by ridiculing those who do not participate. It can introduce the young person into sexualised or offensive language which may then be used with the adolescent’s siblings or parents.
The gang may persuade the adolescent to abandon educational aspirations, denigrate education and the peer group may mock the teenager who succeeds well in school. It may encourage school truancy and disrespect for teachers when the young person does attend school. It may entice the adolescent to bully or emotionally abuse other students, and to engage in behaviour that brings the adolescent up against school authorities.
So what should parents do when the young person is involved in a group about which they are concerned? The first principle is not to criticise that peer group but to focus on the parent-child relationship instead to restore that to as positive a relationship as is possible.
This is most likely to be achieved by identifying and stating all the positive attributes about the young person and slowly ensuring that self-esteem, security, sense of belonging and acceptance are available at home and less necessary outside home.
Providing the young person with alternative activities from negative peer group ones is a crucial step in disengagement from a negative peer group and re-engagement with the young person. Adolescent boys love to spend time with their fathers and feel special if their fathers want to spend time with them.
Taking them to soccer and rugby matches, going fishing, bowling, skiing, swimming and spending time in shared activities, just simply doing things together mean a great deal to young people.
Young women equally enjoy special time with their mothers and need to talk to them about their lives, their worries, their friends, their hopes and dreams. All young people love to know that their parents love them, are concerned about them, will protect them, look out for them and that they believe in them and will keep them safe.
While young adolescents may express resentment at parental protectiveness, clinical experiences show how much they secretly love parents to draw boundaries, set limits, monitor where they are, with whom they are spending time, when they will return and how they will get home, preferably by collecting young adolescents from night-time activities.
Rules can be challenged, but what is a young adolescent to do if there are no rules to challenge? Lack of rules, boundaries and limits suggest to the adolescent heart that parents do not really care enough to set them, and what adolescent can remain angry at the parent who imposes a limit because they love their child?
- Clinical psychologist and author Marie Murray is the director of the Student Counselling Services in UCD