I can almost recall my nearly perfect child hood, I recall kindergarten, where I made friends with anyone, not judging them over anything. I was also very lucky to have an incredibly impartial father, an intelligent man, a teacher. There were some students who would give him death threats, I my self never saw him as such, but instead as my father. He went to numerous universities and colleges, one of them is Mount Allison, the most prestigious university in Canada.

It's definitely something that can look good in your resume, something that could make you a doctor, a dentist, a politician, but instead my father chose to be a teacher, sacrificing the possibility for success in exchange to help educate other people, who sometimes end up sending him death threats.

By now you're probably curious what this thread is about. By far I just gave you an obscure title and a short story. So here it goes, this topic is about adults and children, how we all are born as caring open minded ignorant individuals to self righteous adults.

ignorance is bliss, in a way a child's ignorance makes them far more smarter then most adults. At least when you're a child, you never think about someones colour...not until your parents tell you it's wrong.

Parents can be the perfect spin doctors, they shape our beliefs to there's, and I'll be damned if they aren't self righteous. They spin your mind to how they see fit. But why is it we must be like that? When we eventually choose to be parents will we condemn our children to our own beliefs, plague their minds with our drivel, or will we be honest, and give them the chance to grow up them selves?

This is indeed a serious topic, but logic in the end means nothing if it doesn't come along with experience, I want your opinions and experiences. Is a good parent one which dictates a childs life, or one which sits back and watches the child?
You can always tell your son how bad a drug is, but if he wants one he'll get it. Sometimes the most you can do is just explain to them...and hope for the best.

If I were to have a child I would avoid allowing them to become socially inept like I am. The way I would go about doing this by talking to my child more than my parents talked to me. I don't want to be sealed off beyond small talk from my child when he is a teenager because they think I don't understand anything they're going through. It's kind of sad that I can't really communicate with my parents and other peers very well, but I try my hardest, and after about 20 minutes of thinking I was finally able to type this post out.

No matter how hard you try something of you will rub off on your child wether it is good or bad. This is why it is best to lead by example. My parents told me drugs and alcohol were bad but, more importantly they did not use drugs and drank very infrequently. As a parent the best you can do is offer your child the benifit of your expierences. If they want to make a decision no matter how bad it is they will make it. You try your best to keep them from making the same mistakes as you did and if your lucky you will succede.

On the other hand everyone has hopes and dreams for their child but, as parents we need to push these aside to let our children blossum into adults naturally in order to see what wonderful creations they can become at their full potential not ours. As I watch my best friend's child and my younger cousins grow I can see their parents in them and that is what helps shape them along with their expierences and the mistakes they have made and learned from.

As a parent some day I hope to be able to pass on the good parts of my parents, now in me, to my children and exclude some of the bad things such as my dad's racism and mom's procrastination. Everytime it a racist thought pops into my head I get angry and I promise myself not only will I not bring that thought to life but, I will keep my children from learning the racism from me. This will be an extremly difficult task but, I wish to fulfill it to keep from burdening my children the way I was burdened. I also hope to lessen my child's procrastination as mine has torn my down at certain points in my life and again I do not wish to burden my child with that.

To those children out there don't let your parents direct you down a path you wish not to take but, do heed their advice from their mistakes and try to learn from it avoiding those same mistakes.

Dictating it is. When I get children, I will force them to excel in school, punish them when necessary to teach them limits, tutor them in mathematics and hire tutors if they have trouble in other areas, put them into sports programs if they start getting fat, etc. There's probably a touchy-feely side to this, but I don't feel like touching it .

I think it is questionable at best to believe that a parent has that much sway over how a child grows up. In reality, it is usually the peers that form and shape a child's opinion. As a former Sunday school teacher, I can vouch for that. I used to have a nice boy in my class, very intelligent and he could draw conclusions from multiple facts faster than anyone else in the class (which I thought was impressive, given that I taught 3/4, and he was 3rd). But when he sat with his friends (one of which was a major troublemaker) or when he interacted with them outside of class, he was a hell raiser, and was very hard to deal with.

That being said, I think male children are more susceptible to peer influence, and female children are more susceptible to parental influence. Peers are more hands on (look at what male children do during recess, typically: they play games with a large group of friends, like soccer, kickball, or 'capture the tower' type games), and parents focus more on talking things out (most female children prefer one or two close friends to a big group in early development, and they throughout their lives create close personal bonds with best friends. It is one of the reasons why girls typically feel more comfortable with physical contact from friends, sharing beds, etc.).

I know that the way I raise my children will not directly influence their personality. I will not intentionally smother them, but I have no intention of letting them run wild, either. There are some activities I feel strongly about that I think helped my development. However, I have three sisters, and all of us grew up differently. My younger sister has not had a drink or any drugs, my twin recovered from drug addiction and is now slowly putting her life back on track, and my older sister is seemingly an alcoholic, meanwhile I go out for an occasional drink, and rarely go overboard and I don't smoke (both my twin and older sister do). So what can you say about my parents? Did they "fail" my twin sister? I think it was more our individual personalities and our peer's influence reflecting on us.

*Most information on female/male child behavior is based on typical behavior and studies. That does not mean that being a man, you will never develop a close bond with another man.

As a former child myself, I'll say that I believe that my parents had a far, far greater impact on me than my peers. Actually, I'd say even SEN had a larger impact than me than the cumulative impact of people at school, even counting in the guy who made me interested in current events. I can't really think of any other significant aspect of myself that I'd say my peers contributed to. Well, that's probably not fair. They gave me millions of small behavioral modifications, affecting how I'd communicate with other peers... but, really, does that count?

SEN is part of your peers.

Debatable, but irrelevant, since I still consider my parents to be a far, far greater influence.

The implications of this topic are especially important in the field of public education. The question in that case isn't just how to strike a balance in how much freedom to give the child, it's also how to balance how much control the school system has compared with the parents.

According to my mother, who's an elementary school teacher, one of the reasons mandatory public education exists, is because there are a lot of people out there who are not all that good parents, who believe that school is a waste for their child and that they should instead be working for pay so that they can help support their family.

Our current statute of laws in the United States prevents this from happening, says that the decision of whether or not a child should get an education is not the parents decision to make. By preempting the parents authority on this matter, the government assumes a portion of the responsibility for raising a child.

And what they do with this responsibility is the polar opposite of sitting back and watching the child grow and learn. Instead what they do is they lock them up for eight hours every weekday and set very strict rules for what they can and can't do. So in a way the parent doesn't have a choice when it comes to whether or not to give their child freedom to grow on their own, since mandatory schooling ensures that that can't happen.

For those eight hours, that's true. However, for 16 hours, its the responsibility of the parents to oversee the children's development. While school can try to control them, the actual shaping of the child's personality and outlook on the system is in the parents hands. If the parents do nothing, the child won't care about school, because he won't see any reason for doing well. On the other hand, if the parent enforces school with a system of rewards and punishment, the child has incentive to progress academically, and this desire to progress becomes ingrained, not dissimilarly from using a system of rewards to teach a dog to do tricks. If the world adopted a system of hands-off children rearing, I believe that productivity would drop, and pushed by peer pressure, more and more of the youth would become as moronic as the generic NYC gangsta' wannabe good for nothing.

My parents were raised, back in the USSR, in a relatively disciplined education environment, backed by a disciplined household, and here we are - ten years in the US, starting without knowledge of the language, and now they both work and we're in the upper middle class (very far above average). Discipline allows for optimization of the people in a society.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 4 2009, 4:01 am by Centreri.

I agree with that. The parent is definitely important, but I'm saying the school system limits their power.

Do you think everyone who ends up in gangs ends up in gangs because they have bad parents? A lot of it is the school's fault. If a child is being told eight hours a day that there is no hope for their intellectual future, the parents can reverse that, but they have to fight an uphill battle.

Since when do American schools regularly teach students that they're crap? At least in NYC, in middle school (my experience with the generic American school), there was none of that. Granted, I wasn't near Harlem, but I doubt that you can blame morons entirely (or even a-significant-partly) on the education system.

Your family makes >100k per year, doesn't it? Your own personal experiences may not be sufficient to explain what scwizard is talking about due to your socio-economic status. There are a lot of shitty schools out there.

I think it was maybe 110k back when I was in middle school. We were living in Queens, and despite the education system being as I'd described it (not telling students they're morons), a significant portion of the student body at middle school (and elementary school, though I remember significantly less about that) were idiots.

Every moment you're alive is a learning experience, beginning much earlier than school. People do not like to forget something once they learn it a particular way, even if it is terribly wrong. Parents are the first experience, and are therefor the most important source of information. Parents also have the choice to move someplace to have a child, and so have influence on every other influence, if they truly cared about their child, they would select a good environment.

That's considering if they have the financial resources to buy/rent a decent home in a "good" community. There are plenty of parents who truly care about their children but cannot move out of their current situation due to monetary constraints.

You neglected to mention things that are out of the parents control can affects this RADICALLY.

My dad was a drug user and drank alot, and this exposed me to fights and probably somewhat led to where I am now...but not really.

I (trying not to tell a life story here....) used to be very interested in sports (that i could play...could never hit the ball in t ball...) and bike riding and stuff with the people that lived near me, until my dad was accused of kidnapping a child (i think it was a child, i dont know) Although he was proven innocent, the community didnt like us and didnt want me playing with their children anymore. This led to me being an outcast, and up until we moved i did barely anything outside of the house, simply because i couldn't.

After we moved, i had missed out on a lot of developmental stuff which hurt my progress a lot.

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Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 3 2018, 5:34 am by DavidJCobb.

Out of all posts, I agree with you the most. My mother is a heroine addict, and my father is not a very intelligent man. However, A good family of my best friend taught me the ways of starcraft, and the magical internet when I was around 12. Since then I have loved computers, mathematics, science... when before I was a hoodlum.

Anyway, this is a discussion not a biography. To add to the Fire_Kame's post, my sister is very impacted by the whole "Ahh, my mom is a druggy" thing. She gets very involved with my mother she clearly wants a mother-daughter relationship. My sister seems to bear many traits of my mother... they have the same social radiance, she lies the same way as my mother, she tells stories with the same enthusiasm. etc.

anywho, I agree with Fire_Kame.