Bad Parenting !!

Recently I read an article in one of the magazine titled “At whom the finger points for kids taking to crime?”. The article was very well written with brutal facts in a subtle manner. Inspired by that, here Im with my new post. This is absolutely my own thoughts along with few I picked from that article. So, here u go …
There were times when people always recollected their childhood days as nostalgic moments of their life. It was considered as times of innocence and gradually experience made them learn the reality of life and prepared them to live as an adult. The key contributors to one’s childhood are loving parents, affectionate relatives and close friends. All memories of childhood in some way or the other leads to these people. They are the people who would have made an impact to their life in a profound way that memories of them always bring happiness.
Talking about parents, they give their children the best of everything they could to make their children’s life a pleasurable and a memorable one. They give them good education to be able to live independently at any point in their life, love and affection, wealth that they have acquired through hardwork and what not. Inspite of all these we still hear a lot about juvenile crimes happening everyday. Every parent spends sleepless nights thinking about their children when they get to hear such juvenile crimes. There are several reasons that could be attributed to such crimes. One definite cause of juvenile criminality is BAD PARENTING. Ofcourse, there are other things like media influence, lack of emotional quotient, exposure to technological advances at a very young age, influence from the western culture, etc.. All of these, in some way or the other, lead to bad parenting. Ultimately, all adults are responsible for the children in the society they belong to – be it good or bad.
It isn’t uncommon in today’s world, where we hear of a 17 yr old boy running away from his home to go live with his friends or relatives. Im sure the parents of the boy would nt have thought they were solely responsible for this kind of behavior of their son. Today, there are more and more kids who are involved in more serious crimes like theft, kidnapping, eve teasing, rape and even murder. The first question that comes to my mind when I hear such things are how is it that the parents of these kids dint know what their children were up to. These parents have been blind or too busy with their own preoccupations that they failed to read the warning signs at an early stage. The definitive cause of these kinds of mishaps is adult refusal to take repeated childhood misdemeanors seriously as a possible sign of things to come. If these parents do some kind of honest introspection, they are bound to realize that there were also other early warning signs that something was seriously wrong – signs that they either missed or ignored. So, unless parents are vigilant, mature and insightful besides being loving and supportive, with their children, things can go woefully wrong.
Having said that, one shdnt forget that all parents love their children so much that they blindly trust them and cant believe that they can go seriously wrong. They excuse their kids time and again and blame others for their child’s behavior. They only hope that their child will ultimately turn out to be right with the passage of time. This is why parents are often the last to come to know of the bad habits their children have got into. Sometimes they also forget that the character of their child doesn’t change with time, but changes only with experience coupled with parental love and affection. The children need to be taught what is right or wrong. Ofcourse, after certain age, children aren’t as naïve and innocent to label them as they don’t know whats right or wrong. They are certainly old enough to know at least some, if not all, of the repercussions of their actions.
Taking a deeper look into how parents’ behavior towards children actually makes them choose a wrong track, few things come to my mind. All parents want their children to be best at everything that they want their children to be. They really don’t look into what the child is interested in. Their expectation on the child is generally very high. When a parent is too rigid or strict, the child feels pressurized to do anything to please them. Mental depression sets in due to parental pressure when the child is not able to perform or live up to their expectations. They tend to have a very low self esteem and self confidence. The early stage of life turns out to be so miserable and bitter for them that when the child grows up to an adult, it starts finding happiness and pleasure in things that may not be right. It starts seeking an independent life without the interference of the parents because it thinks his parents are unreasonable, autocratic, dictatorial, lack the basic understanding and even enemy whose main aim in life is to thwart his happiness. They drift apart from their parents and their actions always remain unknown to the parents. They feel much better without a companion so that they don’t need to answer to their questions and can do what pleases them. In most cases this most often leads to truancy or running away from home due to the disharmony that exists at home.
When the child grows into an adult, (Now let me start addressing the child as ‘HE’ now as the child has grown up to an adult J.) , it doesn’t matter to him as to what he does is wrong or right as long as it give pleasure to him. He gets into wrong circle of friends, starts practicing bad habits and becomes very selfish. He becomes more egoistic and demands authority over his parents as well when he realizes his parents can’t prevent him from doing anything that gives him happiness. He also starts becoming aggressive and throws tantrums for everything that his parents tell. Such children also tend to be sexually uninhibited and inclined towards sexual aggressiveness. With the fast moving technological world, money comes to many very easily in contrast to how it was earlier. In those days, one had to work hard and save money to make a good living. But now once can go from rags to unimaginable riches with just one mega deal and make enough money for the rest of the living. This has changed the spending pattern in today’s youth. Come easy, go easy !! Youngsters start spending lavishly on fancy things and when it comes to spending money on the necessary things of life, they end up being bankrupt. Internet is yet another culprit in making a youngster turn a criminal. Internet facilitates anything starting from gambling to dating. Parents need to keep a watch on their child to see what their child accesses on the internet. U never know if ur child is reading the latest research on stem cell or making undesirable friends in chat room and visiting porn sites.
So, there is a lot that parents have to do to make sure their child isn’t going astray. Right from the early days, parents shd give their child a memorable childhood. They should understand the needs of their children, spend time to talk to them and get their children open up to them so that they are well informed of what their children is up to. Only then they can be sure that they are helping their children grow into individuals whom society will be proud of and not go about causing pain and misery to the people in the society. Parents must set good example to the young people, treat them as friends and not show authority over their children. Children, especially boys, tend to idealize their fathers when they are young. Every little boy wants to grow up to be just like daddy, and every little girl thinks their father is the smartest man on this earth. It's not very easy to be a good dad, but it's not that difficult either. What does take more effort however is to be a superb dad. A dad your children will truly enjoy spending time with, not just when they are kids, but even when they are adults. It actually requires an extremely sensitive handling. This apart, a mother and father together contribute to the behavior of their child. Any day you see people in the society find a child with bad behaviour, the fingers would turn to the parents for being responsible for such a kind of behavior.
At the end of this I should say Im indeed grateful to my parents for their unstinted support and love and affection all thru my life. Im very proud of my parents and im sure my parents have been my role models.