My Teen is Hanging With the Wrong Crowd

What To Do if Your Teen is "Hanging With the Wrong Crowd"?

While children are still young, parents exercise their authority to choose their children’s friends for them. They organize play dates, they introduce playmates or take them away from playmates who they think are disruptive and bad influences. However, as teens mature, part of the life skills that they need to develop is to learn how to choose their own friends. It’s quite unusual and unhealthy to still be picking your child’s friends in their teenage years, although it’s understandable that it can be a challenging time for parents when they see that their children are beginning to hang out with the wrong crowd.

How can parents respond when their teens are beginning to hang out with what they consider to be bad friends? Here are a few suggestions:

Safety First – Your teen’s safety is always one of the first considerations when making a decision. There are certain things that should be non-negotiable for safety reasons. For example, going to a party that is not supervised by an adult, drinking, driving a motorcycle without a helmet, and other similar activities can be considered by parents as activities that are not permissible and are not open for negotiation.

Ask questions – If you feel that somebody is being a bad friend to your teen, keep your emotional response in check. Talk to your teen and ask questions that will help you understand the friendship. Teens sometimes pick friends on the basis of social status, similar character traits, and other criteria. Ask about what works in the friendship and what things they do together for fun. Who knows, maybe your teen has a good reason for being friends with these kids. Asking your teen questions about what’s good about their friendship will not only help you understand the friendship but will also initiate a new thought process in your teen; one that they probably didn’t consciously have at first.

Be honest about your concerns – When dealing with teens, an emotional response is hardly ever effective. Sometimes teens just need to know where you’re coming from. Being honest with your teen about your concerns is a good way to focus on the issues that you’re worried about without being overly controlling.

Teach rather than control – If there’s no immediate harm to your teen, teaching your teen to pick good friends and make sound decisions is a lot more productive than controlling their choice of friends. With teens, sometimes the more you control them, the harder they work to break free of your control. Teaching rather than controlling is a better way to stay connected with your teen and eventually helping them learn how to tell good friends from bad ones.

Build up Your Teen’s Self-Esteem – Take every opportunity to build up your teen’s self-esteem so that he/she will be more equipped to resist negative peer pressure. Set the boundaries, establish house rules, reward good behavior, don’t be stingy with your praise, and spend a lot of quality time with your teen. This will allow your teen to develop stronger footing so that when they are faced with the pressures of bad company, they will have the strength to say “no”.

For parents whose teens have fallen into bad company and have started engaging in dangerous behavior, seeking help is a good idea. There are situations where non-residential therapy suffices, there are also instances where residential therapy is better suited because it takes the teen away from bad company. It’s not wrong for parents to admit when they need help dealing with their troubled teen. Sometimes this kind of intervention is the best thing they can do as parents.