Why does peer pressure happen?

Why does peer pressure happen?

Peer pressure happens as children become dis-separating and individuating again in their life. If you remember when your child was starting to walk at the age of one ,or one and a half or two. That's the first time that they're learning to separate from you. They're able to physically walk away and individuate and learn that they are an individual. The same process happens around at eight or nine again and then it happens again at 10 or 12. At different phases of their life it happens again. And so they start to separate and individuate as they become enhanced in they're group of , friends, their people. And as they get to that, there's certain pressures to fit into that group. That's what they do and that's the pressure that they feel, because it new to them. They're also leaving you, they're feeling that anxiety, the anxiety of joining a new group and what's it's going to cost them to join that group. So that pressure builds and they need to able to navigate through that and not necessarily cave into it. Often times children who don't have a good foundation will cave into that peer pressure and find themselves doing things that, they don't even know what they're doing.