Peer pressure at school
The school playground is often a mine field of potential social challenges for many children. While some children thrive in the playground, few are immune to at least some difficulties with their peers. This article highlights seven common peer problems your children may face at school. Teasing and bullying Teasing and bullying are unfortunately still common in the school yard. These issues will often not occur until after age seven or eight, and research indicates that at least three out of five sixth grade students experienced or participated in bullying in schools in New South Wales.
See links below for more information. Loneliness Making friends is more challenging for some students than for others. Some parents become concerned if their children do not have a large number of friends. However, research indicates that the number of friends your child has is less important than the depth of the friendships. Better to have a narrow but deep pool of friends than a wide and shallow friendship circle. Good friendships take time, attention, and more time to develop. Get your children together with other kids regularly to solidify their relationships.
Ostracism Some children will be intentionally left out of activities. There may or may not be teasing and bullying involved. This is a particular challenge, not just in the schoolyard, but also when birthday party invites are being distributed. Missing out can make a child feel awful. If your child is being ostracised, provide support, encourage alternative friendships, or consider involving your child’s teacher. Gender Issues Boys and girls are beginning to learn about one another throughout primary school. Most of the time boys and girls will choose to play separately.
But by around age nine, some children are beginning to have an increasing awareness of the opposite sex and may even start to claim boyfriend and girlfriend status. While this can often be harmless, in many instances having a boy or girlfriend can create significant social challenge. Teasing can occur. Children can be unceremoniously dumped when friends uncover the ‘relationship’ and spread rumours about it. Most teachers and parents will typically agree that boyfriend and girlfriend relationships should be discouraged in primary school years. Many parents would prefer to discourage them until at least age 16! ) Being Cool… or Not By around the age of nine, many children have a keen sense of what is cool and what is not. Much of this is controlled by what they are exposed to via the media (through the Internet, television, and movies). If your child has not got the latest media gadget (e. g. ipod or mobile phone), seen the latest movie, or does not know the words to the hottest song in the country, they may feel excluded and could be teased or ostracised.
This does not mean that children should be indulged or that your personal standards should be altered, but sensitive parents will likely take care to discuss such issues with their children and seek mutually agreeable solutions. Poor performance Children who perform poorly in academic (or other pursuits such as sport) may be excluded or find distance between themselves and their peers. This is a challenge that can be overcome using strategies outlined. Marginalising Minorities
Children who present obvious differences to the majority of students, such as race, religion, or even socio-economic status, can often suffer socially because of the perceptions that they are not like everyone else. These issues can be particularly salient for girls once they reach age ten to twelve, although both genders can be affected. Skin colour or ethnicity, like religious habits, cannot and should not be changed to accommodate the majority. Instead, tolerance can be promoted by parents and schools to aid in peer relationships.
Peer pressure “He who saves one life it is as though he saves the world”. You make the call, you have control over what you want to do or not do. Do you really want to do it, or are you too scared to stand up for yourself and just say no? You must stand up for yourself, and be confident with your decision. What if you say yes? What if you decide not to stand up for yourself? What if you are not confident? This is the moment where you have to decide if that “one time”, will determine your path. But you really have to stop and think for a moment.
Is what you are doing a complete and true definition of you? Whose life are you really leading? There are two kinds of peer pressure. The Positive kind, and the Negative kind. The positive kind of peer pressure is, being pressured or convinced to do a certain task that you may not have had the confidence to complete or to do yourself. Another kind of positive peer pressure is when friends convince you not to do something that may not have been in your best interest. Negative peer pressure is just what it sounds like—It is when Peers try to make you think that they know what is best for you.
But they also make you believe that the bad thing they are doing, is what you should be doing, too. They try to direct you down a path, which is not the correct one. They push for you to have JUST ONE drink. To smoke JUST ONE cigarette…. But, the thing that you can do to save yourself is not always the easiest thing to do– saying NO. But just saying no may or may not be the end of the problem. What it means is that you have to be certain and confident with your choice, and have the inner strength to know that you are doing the right thing.
Being accepted by people who want you to be a follower, and to go down what may be the wrong path, is being accepted or thinking that you will be accepted by people who are not really your friends. Many people forget what the true definition of friend is. Peer pressure, is something that is commonly used on teens. Peer pressure is used, both in positive and negative ways, unfortunately it’s used more often in negative ways. Because of this, I feel that peer pressure is more harmful than beneficial. Peer pressure can be a very powerful tool against teens. It can be used to onvince peers to drink, smoke, steal and many other things. Too many times teenagers end up in jail, pregnant, or in some other kind of trouble because of something they were pressured into doing. They do things they have never done before like; lying to their parents, drinking alcohol, smoking, and sometimes illegal things. They do all these risky things because they have been pressured into doing what is “cool”. It can be very hard to stand up for yourself, as a teen trying to fit in, especially when your being ganged up on by your peers to do something you wouldn’t normally do.
Peer pressure can also be used by teens to convince other teens to go to church, not party, or hang with the wrong crowd. Although this kinda of peer pressure is rarely used, it’s very beneficial. Sometimes when one teen see’s another going down the wrong path and making bad decisions, they try to pressure them into doing the right thing. Teens often tell each other to “be safe” when their; having parties, drinking, or putting themselves into any situation that they could get into trouble.
Although this is positive peer pressure, it’s normally not as powerful or convincing as negative peer pressure because it implies that what that teen is doing, is okay or safe. Peer pressure is a very diverse tool, that can be used for good and bad, but overall it’s a more powerful tool when used in a negative way. Because of this and the fact that negative peer pressure is used more often, I believe that peer pressure can be, but is not, more beneficial than harmful. Peer pressure is the influence of a peer group to an individual, causing them to change their attitudes, values and behaviour.
It refers to any individual who is being persuaded in doing something that is against their judgment but does not have the courage to stand their ground and do the right thing. It weakens the sense of an individual because of the saying “everybody is going to do it” which makes them think that such thing is correct. It causes the youth to strive for social acceptance which makes and individual do something he/she is not comfortable of doing. Peer pressure is most commonly associated with the youth, especially the students, because they spend most of their day in school with their friends and classmates.
Although peer pressure does not necessarily have to be negative, it also has some positive sides. It can make a student strive for academic success because of their peers or it can improve the study habits of students. The study habits of students are highly affected by peer pressure. Study habits are the approach on how school works are done and how students budget their time in doing tasks. It is crucial to the performance of students but also easily affected by peer pressure. It may cause some positive or negative effects. Peers may influence their classmates to study or not. Students also study together.
