The Bandwagon Phenomenon
Why Our Kids Hunger to Fit in to the Fickle Fold

By Elisa Medhus, MD
Author of Raising Children Who Think for Themselves
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Now, more than ever before, it ‘s painfully obvious that many of the world’s children would rather die or kill than not fit in.

Although these few represent the extreme, what about our own children? What kind of pressure do they feel to belong, to be popular, to be worthy of their peer group? That’s an easy, one-word answer: intense. Okay, maybe two words, then: very intense.

Sure, we’re frantically searching for ways to quell the horrific fallout that occurs when children are rejected, teased, and bullied by their peers by counseling the victims and the predators, by tightening school security, by homeschooling our kids and so on. But this is like trimming the withering tips of the branches on a very sick tree. Why don’t we look to the roots to cure that tree by asking ourselves, What drives our kids to require peer acceptance and approval?

To understand this root, let’s examine another—the root of human behavior. We are, much like wolves and dogs, pack animals. Okay, so we don’t howl at the moon, roll in nasty stuff or sniff inappropriate body parts, but we do have one vital pack animal instinct—the urge to belong to our pack. In our case, we may have many packs—our neighbors, our co-workers, our gender, our friends or all of humanity, but in the case of our children, their most influential pack is their peer group.

There are two ways to satisfy that urge for pack acceptance:

* To earn it by coming up with a unique contribution or meaningful role that betters the pack’s welfare.

* To beg for it by pleasing the pack, conforming with the pack, abiding by those arbitrary and often warped standards of worthiness that the pack thrusts in our faces.

Sadly, most of humanity has chosen the latter one, probably because it’s easier to let someone else think for us. Also, over the centuries, requiring people to think and act a certain way has been a convenient way for our leaders to dominate the unruly, uncivilized masses. The Spanish Inquisition. Need I say more?

So instead of raising self-directed children who make their choices based on internal cues like their morals, their values, their past experiences and their concept of self, we’ve been raising externally directed children who rely on the outside word, like their peers, the media, song lyrics and movies, as guiding beacons. And yep, we’ve been doing it for centuries.

Self-directed children use reason like a sword to cut through these external distractions so they’re free to make their choices because those choices are right. Externally directed children make whatever choice is necessary to win acceptance and approval. And to do that, they use all the choice distortion tools at their disposal—excuses, self-deceit, denial, rationalizations, justifications, etc. This makes it easy for them to act on impulse, to shirk responsibility, to thumb their noses at accountability, and to succumb to every temptation, whim, mood or desire.

Look around you at the world today. Read the paper. Watch the evening news. It’s tragically clear what the repercussions for this choice mechanism are.

So what can we do? Simple. We can teach our children how to think for themselves—to recover their true power of thought, to learn how to be rewarded with acceptance as a consequence of their contributions instead of needing acceptance and thereby conforming.

This concept can be disseminated through many avenues quite easily. In fact, a pilot program is in the planning stages that would include "self-direction skills" in elementary school curricula.

For those who want immediate intervention for their own children, the book, Raising Children Who Think for Themselves, provides practical parenting strategies that encourage self-direction in children. If we’re successful, and we will be, we’ll proudly bless our children with a safer, happier and saner future. A world that they deserve.