Give in to Peer Pressure? Me?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Paula Spencer

I'm standing in one of those parent-meeting clusters listening to my daughter's new soccer coach go over uniforms, practice times and contact info. "Is there anything else?" she asks, looking around.

Three beats of silence. Good, we can finally split.

"What about the snack schedule?" a mom pipes up. Heads nod in agreement.

My heart sinks. Ten-year-old girls can't run around for an hour without needing a juice box and crackers? I spend enough money feeding my own kids. And it's just one more thing I'll have to remember!

No wonder obesity is a problem, when kids can't do any activity without the inevitable snack

at the end of it!

But here's what I say instead: Nothing. I silently accept my assigned snack date. Driving home, I realize I've succumbed to PPP—parental peer pressure.

As with the eighth-grade variety, PPP lulls you into drifting along with the crowd against your better judgment. I'm not usually shy about offering my 10 cents (as any close reader of this column can well believe). Yet I'm just as vulnerable as the next mom to occasionally being suckered by PPP. It's a sneaky kind of head trip. Sometimes you don't even realize it's happening—and it's embarrassing to realize it when it does.

It's not that I'd go jump off a bridge just because all the other moms are doing it (to paraphrase my own mother). But evidence abounds of people doing things nearly as nutty—at least, that's the only explanation I can come up with for the stampede to kindergarten tutoring programs and the fact that more than a third of kids under 6 have a TV in their bedroom.

Why is it hard to buck the prevailing winds? I can think of six good reasons. (Or is that six good excuses?)

"The path of least resistance is by definition easier."

At that soccer meeting, I was ready to run home and make dinner. Explaining my anti-snack treatise to my snack-brainwashed peers would have taken more time than just saying, "OK put me down for anytime and e-mail me the list bye." Except that, in the long run, I'll still have to go through the time-consuming motions of buying and remembering a snack I don't believe kids need.

"Maybe everybody else is right."

New moms are especially vulnerable to PPP. Not knowing anything and reluctant to screw up your child for life, you can easily be intimidated by fellow moms who act like they have it all figured out. (No plastic diapers! Don't let them cry! What, you don't use BPA-free glass bottles from Israel?!) They seem so certain, you think maybe their way is the right way. In reality, vocal know-it-alls are often equally insecure people who get a surge of validation every time they convert someone to their side.

"Sticking my neck out might hurt."

I'm fairly impervious to what other people think about my ideas. (I like to think I've matured a tiny bit since eighth grade.) But it's human nature to want to be liked, especially by the other adults in our world. Like my husband is fond of saying (quoting his own mother, of course), If you want to get along, go along. On the other hand, not going along with the status quo is the key to social change. If you say no to preschool athletics, some of your neighbors will scorn you for being a bad sport. But some might be inspired to hold off for a few more years, too.

"Being different might reflect badly on my kids."

It's easy to say no to flip-flops at church or driver's training at 15, if that's what you believe. It's dicier to hear your child whine that you're the only parent on the planet making those draconian choices. Kids want to be liked, too. Their own everybody's-doing-it pressure in turn leans on our choices. The trick is to concede on enough things to avoid ostracizing your child, while standing firm on your core values. (So, nope, no driving at 15 here.)

"Going against the grain might reflect badly on me, too."

If the prevailing definition of a good mom is one who makes organic lunches and cleans without chemicals, you might feel pressured to do those things lest you be labeled a "bad mom." Except for this: Everybody's too busy getting through her own day to score your parenting skills.

David Elkind, PhD, a Tufts University professor emeritus of child development who wrote The Hurried Child, has studied what he calls the "imaginary audience" that adolescents obsess over. Young teens are so preoccupied with the many changes of their life transition that they assume other people are eyeing and judging them in the same obsessive way (when, of course, we're just wondering why they're so sensitive and self-absorbed). He believes that a version of this super–self-consciousness happens during all of life's transitions when we're on uncertain social ground. And what is parenthood if not one strange new transition after another?

"Everybody's doing it!"

Sometimes we're swept along with the tide and, without realizing how it happened, find ourselves far out at sea. (So my friends sheepishly explain how they happened to be ghostwriting college application essays in the wee hours.) "Parents are well-intentioned, but we get wrapped up in the moment," says Devra Renner, MSW, a clinical social worker in Virginia who's an author of Mommy Guilt. "We sign up for activities we can't afford or get bullied into doing things just because the opportunities are there. The big picture—what kids really need, what's really best for them—gets lost."

And therein lies the heart of the matter. Raising kids is all about keeping your eye on the big picture and doing what you in your heart feel is best for them. So as for sometimes behaving like a lemming, I can only once again quote my mom: "That's an explanation, but that's no excuse!"

http://www.womansday.com/home/12870/give-i...e-me-page2.html

[Peikko 1,575]

I don't identify with anything presented in this article.

[*julez* 124]

As a mom of 3 kids, I completely agree with the author. Each kid should bring his/her own water bottle to the game. That's it. All this treat stuff after the game is BS. I have lots of other stuff I need to spend my money on. Worse, at the end of the season EVERY kid gets a trophy, even if your team never one one single game! Don't get me started!

[rclouse 0]

I agree with what everyone else has said.