I have always believed the old sayings that have endured through the years have lasted because there is a lot of truth in them. There are two sayings that come to mind in relation to the subject of this chapter. First, there is "Birds of a feather flock together." Also, there is "One bad apple can spoil the barrel." These sayings aren't talking about birds and apples--they are talking about people. When it comes to children, these two sayings are particularly appropriate. Children are very susceptible to influence from their peers.

One of the main reasons they are so susceptible to this influence is as they grow older, they tend to be rewarded more by the attention and approval of their peers than that of their parents or other adults. This is particularly so as children approach and enter puberty. The junior high and high school years are about the most significant years for this kind of influence.

Since the attention and approval of their peers is so very important to children of these ages, that same attention and approval will be some of the strongest rewards they can get. Unless a child has a very strong self concept and a secure set of values before entering these years, he is very susceptible to influence by the company he keeps. According to the rules of behavior modification, behavior that is rewarded keeps happening. If he is rewarded for maladaptive or illegal behavior by his peers, he will tend to do more of those things. If he is rewarded for adaptive and good moral behavior by his peers, he will do more of those things.

If the old saying is right about birds of a feather flocking together and it does apply to people, you can figure kids with poor morals and tendencies to maladaptive behavior will tend to find each other and stay together as a group. Conversely, those with good moral character and adaptive behaviors will tend to find each other and stick together. If you will observe the way children group together, I think you will find the feather saying is quite accurate.

There are many confounding factors which can influence this. For example, if the "bad" crowd greatly outnumbers the "good" crowd, those in the good crowd will be left out of most things and will probably be teased and become outcasts in school or other social settings. This would make being in the "good" crowd less appealing. This would have a strong influence on almost all children.

The situation I am talking about here is one where the main source of reward for your child's behavior is coming from things that are not under your control. This is going to make using the common-sense behavior modification principles almost impossible to apply.

If your child gets in with the wrong crowd, what can you do? I hope I have made a good case for making this a source of real concern for you. I truly believe children can be started on a path that will be very harmful to them if they are allowed to continue.

Since I have cautioned that you have little control over the rewards affecting major portions of your child's development during these years, I hope I can help you find some ways of dealing with this difficult situation. Most of my suggestions involve your gaining control over how your child interacts with or has access to his group of peers.

One thing you can try is forbidding your child to play with or hang around with an undesirable bunch of kids. If you have developed a good relationship involving respect and trust with your child, this might work. I believe it is essential that you have mutual respect and trust with your child before this approach will work. If you do have this kind of relationship with your child and try this approach, you need to explain the reasons you have for doing it. This means your child must be old enough to understand rational arguments and believe you have some wisdom. My experience has shown this kind of relationship to be pretty rare, but let's hope you have it.

I want to make it clear again that I think the company a child keeps can have a profound influence on the rest of his life. This means this should have a high priority in your choices in raising your child to be a responsible adult. Sometimes, you will need to do things that cause you a lot of trouble and expense. Whatever you do, don't wait until your child is thoroughly involved with the bad crowd before you do something about it. If you wait until then, you will have much more difficulty in changing it.

The circumstances, and your options, will vary according to the age of your child. For instance, your toddler may begin spouting bad words he has picked up at nursery school. You could change nursery schools, but he is just as likely to encounter foul-mouthed children in one place as another. The simpler way is to teach him that certain words are not acceptable. It would be a mistake to register shock and anger and make a big fuss. Much more effective is the same matter-of-fact approach you would use with any misbehavior. A stern "No" with the statement "We don't use that word" will be a lesson in values as well as a correction. If he persists in using the offending word after he understands you don't want him to do it, you will need to proceed to sterner measures.

The older the child, the less control you will have over where he goes, what he does, and with whom he does it. After your child is in school and is old enough to spend more time away from home, you may sooner or later observe behavior that tells you he has fallen in with undesirable companions.

I remember a difficult time when our son was about ten. One clue we had was a request from the teacher for a conference, during which she told my wife about several instances of misbehavior on our son's part. It seems he had even been put on the "bad row." It was during this same period that he suddenly acquired a hunting knife. Naturally he was not supposed to have a thing like that. When we asked, we found he had taken his allowance and bought it from a friend. It developed that the "friend" had stolen the knife from his father, so it wasn't his to sell at all.

When these kinds of things happen while your child is still relatively young, still in elementary school, say, you still have fairly good control over what he does. You may be able to find out who his playmates are, and identify the undesirable ones. If you can do that, you can still exert a certain amount of control over whom he hangs around with and whom he does not. You can set rules for when he can go out to play and when he has to be home. You can control the consequences when he obeys or disobeys those rules. By all means make it pleasant when he does come home on time. Don't forget to reward the behaviors you want to happen.

Now of course if you have to work and can't be there to see what happens, you will have a harder time monitoring your child's behavior. You will have to be creative. Perhaps you and several other people in the neighborhood can form a co-operative effort to keep track of each other's kids. Maybe you can give your child certain assignments to be done by the time you get home. Then be sure to make things pleasant and rewarding when you find he has done them, so your homecoming will be a good happening. You don't need me to tell you it's not easy to raise a child under these circumstances. But it can be done, and done well.

As your child grows older, your ability to control lessens, as I said. If you have been successful in teaching him self discipline and a sense of responsibility, and if you have built a relationship of mutual respect, it won't be too hard. You can often be effective simply by discussing problems that come up. When it becomes necessary you can still maintain control of things like use of the telephone and the car. You can still have rules about when to be home.

But there are cases where the parent-child relationship has gone sour, or where the child for some reason simply refuses to respond to your efforts to control his behavior. Often it is because he has fallen in with the bad crowd we've been discussing. The parent's options are fewer in cases like this.

First, let me tell you some things that almost certainly won't work. I have known parents to do such drastic things as physically confining their children to keep them from sneaking out at night to be with their "friends." During adolescence, being with "friends" seems to take precedence over almost everything else. I place the word "friends" in quotation marks to emphasize that this kind of company doesn't qualify as real friends. I have known parents to nail the windows shut in their teen-age daughter's room to keep her home at night. It didn't work. She still found a way to sneak out after everyone was asleep.

If you are at this stage with your child, I'm afraid this book isn't going to help you much. Things have progressed too far in your relationship with your child for simple approaches to do much good. This situation will probably require more detailed help from professionals. It will also require a good, hard look at your willingness to allow your child to learn some things the hard way. Remember, people learn from the consequences of their behavior. Adolescents can get into some pretty serious consequences, and sometimes it would be wise to allow them to have those consequences without your intervention.

If your child hasn't gone this far and just insists on being with the bad crowd, you may be faced with alternatives that involve removing his ability to be with that crowd. This might take the form of sending him off to another school. It could even take the drastic form of selling your house and moving to another city. I know this is an extreme response to a child insisting on hanging around with the wrong group, but sometimes it may be the only thing you can do. It's not at all fair to your family, and you might not be willing to do it. I mention it here only as a possible solution. If you can't remove the rewards his peers are providing, this way you can remove the peers.

Another possibility is for you to step back and allow your child to learn the hard way as I mentioned previously. If he keeps getting into trouble because of the crowd he is with, you could let him suffer the consequences of the trouble he can cause himself. Sometimes the police will help put a good scare into him by letting him sit in jail a few days. You must be willing to allow your child to experience all the consequences he has earned for this approach to be of much help. Sometimes, those consequences can be pretty severe, but if they won't damage him permanently, it might be a good idea to let him experience them.