Dear Peer Pressure: I’m a parent. What do you say to 15-year-old girls who are mean to each other?

—Stop the Meanness

SR: Sometimes being “mean” is simply a learned habit. It can happen as an act of following inappropriate role-models or it can be due to a result of built-up anger and frustration. On a daily basis, teenagers experience so many developmental changes. They are constantly challenged to find their self-identity and sometimes struggle in balancing their emotions. On a number of occasions, they just need someone to listen to them. This is where friends usually take the place of parents.

Parenting is never an easy endeavor. Yet, your job is not to be your child’s best friend, but his or her guide to making good, moral decisions, so that one day he or she will become a successful adult and make you proud. Setting clear expectations and consequences for noncompliant behavior is a good start.

Effective parenting means expecting the best from your child and assisting in the development of self-discipline and respect for others. When children are mean to other individuals, some parents make them apologize, some scold them and some even make them recreate the situation and explain how they could have acted differently.

Unfortunately, many teenagers spend more time with their friends than their parents. At school, teachers are confined to so many guidelines and time-constraints. They are also responsible for a large number of students at one time and therefore, one-on-one leadership is not always available for most teens.

Role-modeling kind behavior and praising your child when he or she is nice to others might be a good start for making your child cognizant of his or her choice in behavior.

JPC: Meanness is not an easy thing to deal with.  

Unfortunately, it is something pretty much every high-schooler has to deal with (often on a daily basis). The most common cause of this meanness, however, often has much less to do with the person being bullied or talked about, and has more to do with the person doing the bulling or talking.

The main cause of meanness is simple: insecurity — which 15-year-old girls happen to be especially prone to. Many people believe they can make themselves look better as long as they make those around them appear worse, but talking about someone else in an unfavorable light or being mean to them can often make them seem just as bad.

The easiest way to deal with meanness is to not focus on it. And remember that people put more weight on the way you act and how you make them feel when you’re actually around them, than on anything someone else might have said about you.

Meanness reflects much more negatively on the person being mean.

That may bring some comfort to you and 15-year-old girls.

Dear Peer Pressure: Why do kids tell so many secrets and leave others out, especially when it hurts other kids’ feelings?

—Left Out

SR: Telling secrets should be a form of bonding between two people who trust each other and need someone to share their inner most concerns with.

However, some young people tell secrets as a means of alienating others; as an attempt to make them feel less important than the ones who are included. I believe this tactic begins in preschool and continues throughout adulthood.

Sadly, teenagers tend to withdraw from their parents to develop a sense of independence. Consequently, most adolescents spend much of their time conversing socially with their peers. The desire to be accepted is a motivational force that drives them to do things not in alignment with the Golden Rule: “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You.”

For parents, building a child’s self-esteem at an early age is crucial to later development. Adolescents who have a good self-image will seek friends from a more socially accepted group. In addition, children who can make wise judgments on their own will not let others coax them into bullying others. When telling secrets, find a trustworthy person to share them with and make sure your goal is not to offend someone else.

JPC: Unfortunately, kids telling secrets to each other — especially hurtful secrets — is a part of growing up.

I imagine that it makes kids feel more powerful to hold information about other kids from each other, and then use that information against them as verbal weapons.  

Remember when dealing with a secret, however, that it is often nothing important — or in some cases, even interesting — being said. While you may feel left out when you are excluded from receiving the latest secret, take comfort in the fact that knowing will likely have little or zero impact on your life, and that you may not even want to know.

In fact, knowing how little the secret matters, and acting like it, can actually give you more power over the situation. By verbalizing that you want to know the secret, you are giving other kids power, but if you act as if it doesn’t matter to you one way or another, kids usually will give up trying to hide it from you.

A secret is not funny or satisfying once you take its hurtful power away.