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Humorous Teenage Pranks From The Trenches

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One thing is for sure – your teenager will always be up to something. That age group is always seeking out ways to push their boundaries so teenage pranks make for some great stories. I’ve got a couple of stories to share and I have omitted all the names to protect the guilty and the unwitting parents, so enjoy. You probably have some even better than these, so join the conversation and comment below!

Rolling yards is one of the classic teenage pranks. While it is frustrating to the parents, it’s also a badge of honor for the teen. At least in the South, if your yard gets rolled it’s probably because you’re popular among some crowd. But if you’re out rolling yards, don’t leave any evidence behind. A WalMart bag was found among the mess, and in that bag was a logon ID and password written on a piece of paper. Enough information was there to find out exactly who was part of the toilet paper gang – busted!

Let’s just say that teens have a curiosity for the opposite sex. I’ve heard a couple of stories lately about kids experimenting in various places – on the school bus, in their bedroom while Mom or Dad is home, and others. The funniest thing about the school bus story is that although the children were both suspended from school, they were both lauded as heroes among their friends. Hmm, not sure the kids learned their lessons from that one…

Think you’ve cut off internet access? Think again. In this story, a dad thought that he could impose an internet curfew by disabling the home router at a set time each night. This worked for one kid but not the other. You see, the neighbor’s Wi-Fi access point was unprotected so one kid simply connected to their network and kept right on surfing. But the signal wasn’t strong enough to reach the other child’s bedroom. Their big mouth, though, was the end to this little trick – once the other sibling found out about this, parents were quickly informed. Dad turned on the parental controls on each computer to cut off access at the desired time, and that problem was solved.

A whole category of teenage pranks involve being somewhere that you shouldn’t be. Parties will happen and teens want to be there. But if you put a cell phone in their hand, it’s getting to be very easy to find out where your kids are at all times. All of the major carriers now offer some form of GPS tracking to tell where all of the phones on the plan are at any time. So when a dad checked in with his daughter and she said she was at the home of one friend but the GPS locator said she was elsewhere, Dad showed up and put an early end to the night’s events for his teen. An embarrassing moment for the teen, to say the least.

Sometimes your child will live a double life – online, that is. It’s becoming more common for teens to have two Facebook profiles – one for family and one for friends. When that happens, this becomes the place where their teenage pranks are lived out online. Teens are starting to hear the message that their online reputation is important, and they don’t want their parents seeing the pictures from that party or messages from certain conversations. Those alternate profiles can be tough to find – in the case of this story, the only way it was noticed was that an unfamiliar email address popped up in the login prompt for Facebook.

My point in sharing these is more than just to provide humor. We should always be on the lookout for what your child might be up to. We can (and should) trust our children, but occasionally verifying that what they say is true will help keep them on the straight and narrow. It is their nature to test their limits and boundaries with these teenage pranks and it is up to the parents to keep those limits firmly in place.

Application Question: Are you on the lookout for these and other ways that your teen might be overstepping their boundaries?

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Why Is Peer Pressure So Powerful on Teens

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We all want to fit in. We tell ourselves that we’re individuals, but we conform to the societal norms. For the most part, we dress alike, talk alike, work alike, and live many aspects of our lives just like our neighbors. So is it any wonder our kids want to be like their friends? This is the genesis of peer pressure. For teens, this is an extremely powerful motivator. We’ll explore reasons why in this post and give parents some weapons to combat the forces of peer pressure.

As I wrote in a previous post, the teen mind is more susceptible to peer pressure because teens are motivated by the rewards of their behavior. Teens understand the associated risks of their boneheaded stunts, but winning the admiration of their friends weighs in heavier than backing away because of the risk. Thus, we find ourselves shaking our heads when we see our own teen or others involved in some ridiculous stunt. Thankfully, many of these are harmless and the worst thing that happens is that our teen learns a harsh life lesson. Some of these go bad and sadly, a teen may wind up behind bars or dead as a result.

And other teens don’t help the situation either. For peer pressure to be effective there needs to be peers involved in “encouraging” the unwitting recipient to engage in the questionable behavior. Often these kids see something that has been sensationalized on television or has gone viral over the internet and they want to see someone do the same in person. Or, a weaker child might get caught up with the wrong group of kids and do something they otherwise would not do in order to be accepted into that group. For boys and girls alike, the desire to be seen as a daredevil, a risk taker, a tough guy, or something similar is strong. For teens without strong parental influence in the home, the likelihood of them stepping into this spotlight is high.

How can parents cope? What strategies can minimize the influence of peer pressure on teens? For starters, parents need to know their children’s friends and their parents. Parents need to set strict guidelines on where a child can go and high expectations that the child goes where they say. Say no when you feel that it is the right thing to do – remember that you are the parent. Curfews are a must, and penalties for either breaking curfew or being somewhere other than they say need to be enforced. These activities set boundaries for your teen, something that deep down inside they need and desire from their parents.

At every turn, have discussions with your teen about actions and consequences from real-life situations. Talk to them about your own struggles with peer pressure and societal norms, and that you understand what they are going through. This might be the single-most important tool in the struggle against peer pressure. Ensure that your teen hears that you are happy and content with your life and that you aren’t unduly influenced by others and their standing in life. In other words, let them know that it is OK to be a little weird.

Build their own self-esteem by letting your child know how special and unique they are. If you don’t compare them to others, then they are less likely to compare themselves to others. Let them know that “friends” who make their friendship conditional on an action, behavior, or some material trapping are no friend at all.

No matter what our actions, we will never fully shelter our children from the effects of peer pressure. They do need to know how to recognize it and cope with it now and throughout the rest of their lives. If they can learn contentedness at an early age, it will pay huge benefits to them later on in life. Through proactive, involved parenting, you can put your child in the strongest possible position to fend off peer pressure.

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Go with the flow or hold steady?

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As parents, your child looks to you for everything. How you do things, how you respond to things, how you treat others, your habits good and bad, all are subject to consumption, inspection, and scrutiny by your child. Often our responses in crucial situations dictate how our child’s character will develop down the road. When faced with a situation, do you go with the flow and be the cool parent or stick to your principles?

In some cases, we need to be flexible and adapt. Technology is a prime example of where we can bend and flex to meet our children’s desires and help us keep them safe. A cell phone is a prime example. You may cringe at your child having a phone, but most providers today give you the ability to add GPS tracking to your phones. How cool would it be to know where your child is at all times? You can if you adopt these technologies. They get a phone, you have a means to reach them, and you also know where they are.

In other cases, you need to stand strong. Your child may want to play mature-rated games, they may want to have a later curfew, go to a party that everyone is attending, and so on. This is no time to be the cool parent. Let your instincts guide you, especially you mothers. It will be tough at times. Your child will have many compelling reasons why they should be allowed to go or do these things and peer pressure is often their guiding motivation. They will also be angry with you when they can’t go or do what they’ve asked.

You’ll be tempted to give them a little rope and see how they handle it. In my mind, this is a bad move. Your child also notices how consistent you are in the way that you treat them, and once you introduce inconsistency then it’s very hard to put that back in the box. Every time you are faced with this scenario, your child will remind you of the time that you let them do this before. Stay strong, and stay consistent.

I read a beautiful illustration of this principle in Seth Godin’s “Poke the Box” but I’ll use it differently than he did. In the rushing river is a log wedged into the riverbed. All around it there is constant motion and change, and as things flow by that log in the river the water and turbulence is particularly high around the log, but it never moves. As your child rushes down the flowing river of their life, if things get out of control then you hope that the log is there for them to grab onto. You, acting as their constant, their rock, their log in the river, can be the rescue that they grab onto as they are rushing down that river toward the waterfall. Be your child’s parent. Both you and your child have more than enough friends to get through life without compromising that relationship.

 

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