Teenage years are an exciting time: high school, friends, first crushes, favorites songs and making memories that can last a lifetime. But it is also a time for making first choices and decisions. Teens are very vulnerable to outside forces that may encourage them to make poor choices, such as advertising for tobacco or vaping products, or peer pressure to drink, smoke, vape or abuse drugs. It is our responsibility as adults to help them make good choices and good decisions.
The need to belong to a group is a big part of being human, and it is especially true for teenagers. They want to be accepted for who they are while they are in the process of discovering who they are. Parents and other adults made most of the decisions for them when they were younger, but now they want to make their own choices.
If teens spend a lot of time with others who participate in sports, they probably will too; if they are with students interested in art or music, they probably will have a similar interest; and if they spend time with others who smoke or drink, chances are they will do so as well.
A friend of mine told me he was fairly rebellious as a teen, but in spite of that, his parents tried hard to bring him to places where the other teens were well-supervised in positive environments. As a result, since none of his friends smoked, he never tried a cigarette, and because he was in a church teen choir, he developed a lifelong love of music.
Source link