As I watch my almost ten year old son struggle with peer pressure and the need to find his own way in the world of 4th grade adolescents, I am transported back to my own struggle as an awkward 6th grader, a time when I was caught between being faithful to my friends or being honest and true to myself.
I failed at being true to myself—
The room was quiet. Tense breathing and pencils scratching, the only sounds to be heard. As I sat there, studying my own test, I felt C’s pencil tap me lightly on the shoulder.
As I snuck a glance backwards, she waved the folded note in her hand and nodded towards K, who sat in front of me. I sighed. It seemed easy, just pass the note with the test answers to K. I knew they were the test answers because C had told us the day before that she had them.
All I had to do was pass the note to K when C was done using them.
I could use them after K, although I wasn’t much for cheating. My lack of a social life left plenty of time for studying.
All I had to do was pass the note from one girl to the other. Easy. I glanced up at the teacher, she was watching everyone intently. It would take some quick maneuvers to get the note passed.
C was getting impatient, I reached my hand backwards and grabbed the note. Now all I had to do was pass it forward to K.
I tapped K with my pencil, just as I was ready to hand her the note, “Amy, what’s that in your hand?”.
Oh no, I was caught. My heart started to race. How was I going to get out of this one?
I got up and handed the note to the teacher. She opened it and gasped. She directed me to go sit in the hallway. As I looked back to my classmates, I saw C shaking her head and K looking defeated.
The teacher came out in the hallway. “I know this isn’t yours, Amy. Just tell me who it belongs to and you won’t get into any trouble.”
But I will get in trouble, I thought. While I believed that K and C were my friends, I was petrified of the prospect of turning them in. In the hierarchy of sixth grade popularity, I was just beginning to come into my own.
“I can’t tell you.” I manged to stammer. She looked me squarely in the eye and told me I had until the end of the day. Otherwise, she would take action.
Action? Detention wouldn’t be as bad as the alternative. I imagined the girls ganging up on me after school. Worse than the possible beating I might endure was the distinct possibility that I would become the girl who told. A stigma worse than detention. Yeah, her action couldn’t be as bad as the alternative.
Lunchtime came, K and C begged me not to tell. I began to feel a little heady with the promise of favors and material things offered as compensation for my fall from grace. Surely a couple of detentions was worth the admiration I would garner by not telling.
The end of the day came all too quickly, the teacher cornered me before I could get to the bus. “Well?” she waited expectantly.
“I can’t tell you.” I stared at the ground, feeling both smug and anxious, waiting for her sentence.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, I thought the candidate for Student Council Secretary would do the right thing. I’ll have to take your name off the ballot, you can no longer run for Student Council.”
I felt the world turn sideways, I trudged onto the bus, tears streaming down my face. My fall from grace not the cheap thing I had imagined.
Did you struggle with peer pressure as a child? Do your children struggle with it? Do you discuss the consequences of succumbing to peer pressure? What are some ways to encourage our children to do the right thing?
This is an original post written for World Moms Blog by Amy Hillis from Ohio, USA. When she’s not keeping up with her boys, she can be found on Facebook and on Twitter @transplantedx3
The image used in this post is attributed to b3d_ It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Amy Hillis (USA)
Amy is a native Chicagoan that currently resides just outside of Cincinnati, OH. A city girl, through and through, she’s still adjusting to small town life. Amy has a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art with a minor in French from Elmhurst College. She was working on her Master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, when she became pregnant with her 3rd child. Although this angel boy was only here for a very short time – he left quite a legacy. Nathaniel was born with a rare genetic disorder called Citrullinemia. Amy and her husband, James, went on to have 4 more boys, 3 of whom were also born with Citrullinemia. In January 2011, her youngest son, David passed away from complications of a liver transplant performed to 'cure' the Citrullinemia. Now a stay-home mom of 5, she started blogging in October 2010, while David was still in the hospital. Two of her other sons have had successful liver transplants to cure their genetic disorders. Her 2 older children still live in Chicago. When not hanging out with her kids, she spends her ‘me’ time writing, sewing, reading & walking. Amy also spends a generous amount of time online. She can be found on Twitter @transplantedx3. On Facebook and on her Website <a href="http://mytearstainedlife.com"My Tear-Stained Life
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I really related to your post, Amy. We moved to South Africa when I was 8 years old and couldn’t speak any English! I was also clumsy, “nerdy” and useless at sports. The perfect “target” for both verbal and physical abuse. The more the teachers and headmistress tried to protect me, the more vicious the other girls became! 🙁
I still remember the “turning point” in my Primary School Career. After 6 years of being the “good girl”, I’d finally had enough! One morning the girl who sat directly behind me in class would not stop pulling my hair. The rest of the girls thought it was hilarious! I asked her to “stop it” 3 times and then turned around and whacked her through the face so hard that her head bumped on the wall behind her desk, and she burst into tears. Just then my headmistress walked into the class and demanded to know what had happened. I was waiting for someone to rat me out (because I was so hated) but they didn’t! So after waiting a couple of minutes to make sure nobody was going to say anything, I put up my hand and calmly said “Lucia wouldn’t stop pulling my hair, so I hit her.” The headmistress replied: “Oh, ok class, take out your books”! Not only was I not punished, but the other girls stopped ganging up on me! Obviously, I don’t encourage kids to resolve their issues with their fists. That said, unfortunately, sometimes nothing else will do!
My son especially, but also my daughter to some degree, are considered “nerds” because they are sensitive and top students. The main difference between their experience at school as opposed to mine is that they are confident and have a healthy amount of self-esteem. I’ve spent my life teaching them to trust their “inner voice” and to recognize different points of view as being just that, different, not necessarily better or worse.
My son is now 19 years old and my daughter is 16 years old. We have an excellent relationship and (so far) they have surrounded themselves with other teens who are ALSO intelligent and sensitive! Neither group of teens indulges in the common “risky” behaviour of experimenting with drugs, alcohol or sex. Both my kids have best friends who could be their siblings, because they were all brought up with the same values. Best of all, I’m Facebook Friends with all of them! 🙂 There is some truth to the saying that “Birds of a Feather Flock Together”.
In my opinion, the best way to protect your children from the evils of the “wrong kind” of peer pressure, is to have open and honest conversations with them, and reinforce that they’re loved UNCONDITIONALLY and can ALWAYS call you if (for example) they’re at a party and someone offers them alcohol. I’ve gone so far as to tell them that, even if they DID get drunk (despite my warnings on the subject) I still wouldn’t punish them if they called us to fetch them. Luckily, so far, that hasn’t happened … but they HAVE called us when (for example) a friend’s party ended up being an unsupervised “free for all”. They asked us to fetch them because they didn’t feel comfortable in that atmosphere! I’m actually really proud of that! 🙂
Thank you for the comment! I received a call from the school today about my son and a couple other boys that were picking on another boy in their class. The principal had nothing but good things to say about Jacob, he was honest about what had happened and seemed genuinely remorseful that he had made fun of the boy. I wonder how do I convince him to steer clear of the 2 boys instigating the trouble? Jacob wants to fit in, yet he seems to have the ‘wrong’ kids to try and fit with.
Peer pressure can be so destructive, or really useful and supportive. I believe children transfer most of their emotional allegience to their peers from around the age of nine and need to bond with their peergroup in order to successfully grow up and away from their parents. I have learned to watch for the kinds of friends our boys are drawn to, without any prompting from us – how those kids are has always reflected the current state of mind/spirit of our boys. If those kids are the kind of kids I would like our boys too be, I know things are on track – if not, I start to investigate where our lads are feeling uncertain or sad/angry.
On the flip side, there is a group of children in my eldest son’s class who busk to raise money for the local SPCA and who have influenced others to do the same. Peer pressure can be very positive!
Ahhh!!! I want to go back in time and be your friend, Amy, who helps you stand up to those girls!!!
Thank you for sharing your story and reminding us about the impact of peer pressure on kids.
Jen 🙂