Decades of research tells us that a teen's behavior is heavily influenced by multiple influences in their environment. The various influences work together through their reciprocal effects to create an environment that either supports or sustains a teen's behavior. Certainly, the presence of different people will lead to different behaviors. For example, a child may behave differently around their peers than they might around their grandmother or a pastor. The aforementioned influence of friends is one parents need to strongly consider and assess. Parents often report that their child was "a good kid until he started hanging out with the wrong crowd." While some may balk at this explanation, the research on delinquency clearly supports it.
The most direct predictor of delinquent behavior, other than prior history, is delinquent peers (Dishion et al. 1996; Prinstein and Dodge 2008) who encourage the behavior through their favorable attitudes and express approval. Kids tend to operate in groups of friends and do things together. If your child is hanging around with kids committing offenses or using drugs, they’re likely to do the same. If your child associates with kids who are playing sports or working on computers, they are likely not stealing, getting high, or beating people up. If a group hangs out in front of a store, drinks, and harasses others, it makes sense that it would be more effective to remove your child from that situation rather than trying to explain that nice kids do not do such things.
Intervening in the peer group can be a challenge, but if you are concerned about your child's behavior, this is an important challenge to accept. If you do not know where your child goes and with whom, it is much more likely that they can be found with delinquent kids. Lack of monitoring allows kids to have unsupervised time with other unsupervised kids, which provides opportunities for delinquent behavior.
It is crucial that you assess your child's friends for the influence the likely bring. You must also identify where your child and friends congregate and their activities at each location. Additionally, once you have a clear understanding, you must create expectations around peer associations and approved locations. Such tasks are clearly more of a challenge than can be adequately covered in a blog post. However, it is important that parents of teens with significant behavior understand that their concerns about their child's peer group is well-founded and that their influence is subject to parental control with careful planning.
For more information, check out Duffy’s new book, Parenting Your Delinquent, Defiant, or Out-of-Control Teen: How to Help Your Teen Stay in School and Out of Trouble Using an Innovative Multisystemic Approach.
2. Prinstein, M.J. & Dodge, K.A. (2008) Current Issues In Peer Influence Research. In Understanding Peer Influence in Children and Adolescents, edited by Prinstein, M.J. & Dodge, K.A. New York, New York: The Guilford Press.
