If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?

As a kid, my parents always told me to be my own person, to rise above the mire of expectations and social pressure, and do what I thought was the right thing to do.

"If all your friends jumped off a cliff," they'd ask me, "would you jump too?"

"No way!" I'd reply indignantly. "That would be stupid!"

"That's right, sweetheart," they'd tell me. "Don't let anyone pressure you into anything you don't want to do."

Really good advice, actually, and it so happened that this is one of the few things I listened to them about. As a result, I often stood out in a group, but not for good reasons. I was the perpetually untidy looking kid, the kid who didn't care about her appearance, and it showed. I was the kid who didn't live up to her potential, the kid who never put in enough effort. As the years passed, I morphed into a gangly, awkward teenager, who didn't wear make up or wear pretty girly clothes, and who made it a point not to worry about what anybody else thought about her. I avoided social situations like dances and parties - I didn't try to fit in, and I never really did. Don't get me wrong, I had friends - wonderful, warm friends, a few of whom I am in constant contact with even now. But otherwise, I was almost invisible, nowhere near a blip on the tumultuous social radar.

Now that I'm a mother, I find myself constantly questioning what I should be teaching my daughter. Obviously, I want her to be an independent, strong-willed person. I want her making her own decisions, want her never to be manipulated into doing something she doesn't want to. So, at some point, I anticipate asking her whether she would follow her friends off a cliff.

But a part of me wonders - is it so wrong to want to fit in? I know that left unchecked, it could be a slippery slope, but sometimes, just sometimes, isn't it okay to do something you don't really want to do because everyone else is doing it? To go for a dance that all your friends are going to so that you're not the only anti-social person in the group? To spend your pocket money on something frivolous instead of saving it like your parents have always told you to? To worry more what people will think of your prom dress than about what grade you got on your Math test?

I guess, in the end, like everything else in life, it's all a question of balance. Don't let other people think for you, but once in a while, make exceptions. It's okay to want to be liked and accepted as long as you keep sight of what's important for you, as an individual. I guess my advice to my daughter would probably be - Don't follow your friends off a cliff, but it might be okay to jump into a muddy puddle with them sometimes.