It is not enough to blame children who are indiscipline; we should also blame those who failed to discipline them. When elders sit and talk about children of those days, I wonder who the children are emulating. When elders neglect what they ought to do, the youths will do what they ought not to do, or that which they believe they should do.
Upbringing is the way in which you are treated and educated while tender especially on how you behave and make moral decisions. Promoting and supporting the physical, social, emotional and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adult-hood is referred to as parenting. Parenting is very difficult because human beings are almost impossible to deal with.
Ben Carson, a professor of Neurosurgery said that parenting is tougher that brain surgery. I have heard some people say that the most difficult times in life are when you are a teenager and when you have a teenager. Giving birth to children is not as important as the children’s upbringing. Becoming a mother is not just about having a child. It is more about the challenges of motherhood. It is also about the pains involved in bringing up the children in an envious and acceptable way.
Meridith Nicholson once said that the well mannered child is it’s parent’s pride and best advertisement. Every parent will be glad to say “my son is now a successful lawyer”. No parent would like to say “my daughter is now a good kidnapper”. What a child becomes in future depends on certain factors which upbringing is the topmost. The parental influence is a very important factor in shaping the child for adulthood.
Upbringing has the power to affect the future and destiny of every child. Upbringing can either make a child or mar her. This is why the Bible instructs parents in Proverb 22:6 to “train up the child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it”. It is true that a lot of children rebel against their strict upbringing but the most important thing is for parents to tell them the truth about life, they can then decide to derail at their own risk or peril. A lamb that walks alone is an easy prey to the world. A youth should be guided and directed to the right path, not just by the parents but by the society including school and church instructors.
In this part of the world, we lay more emphasis on women when talking about children upbringing. This has to do with the popular belief that, “if you train a woman, you have trained a Nation”. Most times male children can be allowed to do certain things that female children are not allowed to do. In some families, girls do all or more of the domestic chores. In our culture, our mothers teach their daughters how to cook, keep the home, greet their elders and also prepare them for marriage. We should applaud parents who are able to train their children very well because they went through difficult processes to achieve that.
Parents influence their children in countless number of ways. Firstly, they create the life and mix the genes. Children inherit some traits from their parents. Then parents create the environment that the child is raised and heavily influence the child’s intellect and personality by the ways they interact with them. Childhood affects adulthood just like morning affects afternoon. Some pains and trauma inflicted on the child during childhood can affect the child later in life. Some adults acquire certain personality traits just because they passed through certain experience when they were little kids. If a child was raised by an over protective family, then he will develop fears and insecurities because of believing that the world is unsafe. When a little child is raped by her father, she lives and grows with the trauma and may not trust people again because the person that should protect her, abused her.
Dr Myles Munroe is of the opinion that parenting must never be left to chance, it is too important a responsibility. Some parents are working hard to instill discipline on their children but some children are just ingrates. Children from good homes can sometimes go astray. But then children with good upbringing are in a better position to correct their mistakes than the children with no upbringing. So many youths have soiled their hands in a bid to meet up with parental or societal demands. Some parents like drawing comparisons between their children and their mates. This goes a long way to push the youths far away to get greener pastures by all means. Some youths have sold their kidneys, some have become “yahoo boys” and some have attempted traveling abroad through the desert just to please their parents. Some are into voodoo, cultism and other diabolical or dubious means, just for self actualization.
Parenting is taskful and at the same time fulfilling. It requires patience and understanding. Parents should know how best to train each child depending on the individual’s abilities and differences.
Dr Ben Carson said that one important way to make certain, your children experience the consequences of their actions, is to resist the urge to always bail them out when they get themselves into trouble. God bless all the parents in the world for this difficult task of upbringing.
Parents influence in child upbringing has however waned with the commencement of early education for the child. With enfants who are yet to crawl or begin to talk now sent to kindergarten or nursery schools, it is very difficult for parents to impact knowledge, ideas, opinions and good attitudes on them. They tend to emulate their teachers, schools mates and friends the more. It will require parents to leave their jobs and baby-sit children, so as to influence them.
