As they get older, tweens become increasingly engaged in risk taking. These risks might include using drugs and alcohol, performing dangerous physical stunts and/or sexual involvement. There are many reasons for tweens' increased tendency to take risks.
Attitudes About Risk Versus Reward
When tweens decide whether or not to do a risky act, their attitudes guide them. Attitudes consist of positive and negative expectancies about the outcome of an activity. In the case of drugs and alcohol, positive expectancies might be “I'll be more social” or “I’ll feel happy.” Negative expectancies could be “I’ll feel dizzy” or “I’ll embarrass myself.” When children are young, they usually have few positive expectancies about using drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, and many negative expectancies. With age, however, comes greater exposure to substance use, such as through the media, parental use and peer use. This exposure typically causes kids’ positive expectancies to increase and negative expectancies to decrease. A similar trend happens for other risky activities, such as sex. As the scales shift, tweens become more likely to take risks.
Cognitive Limitations Regarding Risk Taking
The closer tweens come to adolescence, the more egocentric - or self-absorbed -they become. This is a normal cognitive change (even if it proves quite irritating to parents!), but it can have a nasty effect on risk taking. With increasing egocentricism comes a belief in the “personal fable.” The personal fable is the belief that their life story is unique and that they are special. Research has shown that young people who consider themselves to be so exceptional cannot imagine that they could be vulnerable (how could such a special person ever get hurt?!). This can make them more likely to take risks.
Increasing Need for Social Acceptance
With each passing year, children distance themselves further from their parents and become closer to their friends. Like the rise in egocentricity, this increasing need for social involvement is developmentally normal and healthy. A problem can come in, however, if a tween chooses a group of friends who take a lot of risks. In order to feel socially accepted, the tween will likely engage in the same behaviors as their friends. Choice is a key concept here, though. Contrary to the common notion of “peer pressure,” researchers find that tweens and adolescents actively choose friends who have similar attitudes as themselves. In other words, it’s unlikely that tweens “fall in with a bad crowd” who then pressure the “good kids” to smoke or drink or have sex. On the contrary, tweens pick friends who they feel similar to. So while peers definitely matter, it’s the attitudes, self-beliefs and aspirations your tween holds while choosing their friends that matters most of all.
Desire to Be Like an Older Sibling
In addition to behaving similarly to peers, tweens increasingly want to mimic the behaviors, attitudes and sayings of older peers. For many tweens, the most readily available older peer may be an older sibling. Older siblings to tweens are often in their teen years, which happen to be the peak years for risk taking. In an effort to feel “grown up,” a tween may start to imitate an older sibling’s risky behaviors. In fact, researchers have found that older siblings have a bigger role than same-age peers in encouraging drinking and drug use. Some older siblings encourage risk taking blatantly, such as by actively teaching younger siblings how to engage in - and get away with - risky acts. Other older siblings would never think of doing such a thing, but nonetheless strongly influence their younger sibling(s) simply by modeling risky behavior. Therefore, the more an older sibling takes risks, the more likely a younger sibling is to engage in risk taking, as well.Sources:
Phares, PhD, Vicky. Understanding Abnormal Child Psychology, Second Edition. 2008. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Santrock, PhD, John. Children, Eleventh Edition. 2010. New York: McGraw-Hill.
