I’m excited to begin my first column with Families Online Magazine! With 30 years’ of counseling experience, I’m going to discuss many issues in “The Counselor’s Corner.” I will begin with a series in an expertise area I have: negative peer pressure. For several months, we will discuss the daily struggles that children and teens face with their choices when they are with their peers.

The soaring rate of juvenile crime, the widespread use of drugs, the high dropout rate, and the alarming increase in teenage pregnancies and adolescent suicides attest to our society’s failure to provide youth with sufficient skills to develop into well-adjusted, healthy human beings. During the 1970s while serving as the Director of the Dallas Police Department’s First Offender Program my awareness was broadened of how “good kids” from caring, loving homes can make poor decisions that result in broken laws and shocked parents. The single major factor influencing those poor decisions was negative peer pressure. So often such crimes were committed out of boredom, or on a dare or challenge! The majority of these young people would not have done alone what led to their being taken into custody. Since that time my work travels have taken me to schools and conferences across the U.S. and eight foreign countries teaching parents, educators, counselors, children, and teens my proven “Peer Pressure Reversal” skills.

Let’s understand peer pressure better and expose some common misconceptions about it.

MYTH 1: Peer pressure mainly concerns decisions about drugs and sex.

COUNTERPOINT: Research shows that 87% of teens face at least one negative peer pressure situation every day! The most common ones involve choices whether to cheat, gossip, be in a clique, and lie to parents about planned activities.

MYTH 2: Peer pressure begins in the teen years.

COUNTERPOINT: Peer pressure begins usually at age two or three (i.e., “If you don’t play this game with me, then you can just go home.”). It intensifies, however, dramatically in the teen years. The toughest peer pressure years for most youth are the first year of middle school, the first year of high school, and the freshman year of college.

MYTH 3: Bullies are primarily responsible for pressuring other children to do wrong.

COUNTERPOINT: When kids are asked to identify the people who try to talk them into uncomfortable or trouble situations, they most often name their best friend, older kids (including siblings), the popular kids, as well as boy or girlfriend.

If our children are going to survive in this overly fast-paced, sophisticated world in which they live that encourages them to grow up too fast, it’s imperative that parents, educators, and other concerned adults teach them specifically how to say no while maintaining their friendships and their dignity. Our adult mantra of “just say no or leave” is not likely to give them the skills nor the courage they need when the heat’s on from pressuring peers to cheat, fight, skip class, cut others out of the group, drink alcohol, ride bikes too far from home, play with guns, or any of the other trouble invitations that they are likely to receive.

oming in next month’s The Counselor’s Corner: How to tone down societal pressures that encourage our children to grow up too fast.

Excerpted in part from Pressure Reversal: An Adult Guide to Developing a Responsible Child, 2nd Ed. by Sharon Scott. Copyright © 1985, 1997, 2006. No reproduction without written permission from the author.