THE EFFECT OF PEER PRESSURE

 

This is a WAKE UP CALL for everyone.

The picture attached to this write up is the picture of a girl I will like to refer to as El (real name withheld).

I told her guardian to help me take the picture during one of my counselling (therapy) session with El.

Before El's guardian took the picture I already told her that I will use it on our page. But I told the guardian I don't want El's face to be seen, so she took the picture from El's back view. This was done intentionally to protect El interest & privacy.

At the time of this counselling/therapy session done, El was 12 years old.

El is a girl enrolled in a boarding school by her mum who resides outside the country.

In the said boarding school, she has a school mother and her school mother has a group of friends. I will like to refer to them as a sect or a cult.

This is because during my finding I realize that they always target young girls who have parents abroad and they extort them.
So, El became a target. One of the sect's member is already El's school mother so that made the operation w very easy.

They started by asking El, "What do you have in your house?" Her response was always "Nothing". Until they devise another means and asked "What of money?"

El didn't give them any positive response but they didn't give up. They kept pestering her.

The pressure from El"s school mother and her sect kept mounting. And anytime she was going home for holiday, they kept asking that she should bring something along when was returning back to school.

She felt pressured about this matter but she never related how she was being manipulated to anyone.

I am sure if her guardian or parent had been following up closely by asking questions like "How is school?" "Do you have friends?" What are their names? " and so on. There would have been an avenue for El to discuss the pending matter with her guardian or parent. But the guardian or even her mum abroad never showed that much concern about what goes on in El's school.

Eventually, after much manipulative strategies from El's school mother and her cult members, El succumbed.

In El's house, the proceeds from her mum's company is usually taken home pending the time they are able be save in the bank the next day.
So, El saw this an opportunity to carry out the demand from her peers' pressure.

She took ₦300,000 out of the money at home and took it to school to give to her school mother and her sect.

They kept pressuring her before she leaves school for holiday and another time, she took ₦150,000 with the intention of delivering it to those cultists again and she was caught. That was how they got to know that that was not the first time.

The morals derivable from El's story is that:
🎯 Peer pressure is real

🎯 You can train a child well but immediately she mix up with the wrong set of person or people. It will affect him/her negatively

🎯 You need to follow up on your child's activities in school and in the vicinity.
Ask questions about their friends to know the kind of relationship they have with those friends. And the kind of things they discuss.

🎯You need to establish a level of friendship with you child or guardian for that child to easily open up to you.

🎯 There is nothing like a 'bad child'. A child always become whatever they become for a reason. It's like a law of cause and effect. Once their is a cause, there will always be an effect.

🎯 Encourage your children to invite their friends and Acquaintances home. This will enable you to (through observation) understand the calibre of people your children are mixing or relating with through.

🎯 Peer pressure has no age restrictions.
All you need is to be careful.