From birth and the formative years in your child’s life, you are your child’s primary molder. You decide the course necessary for your child’s future growth to be productive and successful. You pick the right schools and provide exposure to different learning venues, such as zoos, libraries, and sporting activities. At this stage in their lives, you control their interactions with friends or acquaintances. You are their first and most important teacher, loving and nurturing your child, giving him/her a strong sense of security and trust.
You are the major contributor to your child’s fundamental needs, whether it be economic, social, physical, or emotional. Proper and adequate adherence to providing for these needs will help mold your child into his/her formative, adolescent, and adult years. This is a job that should not be taken lightly because the consequences can be detrimental and life-altering. While there are other pivotal factors weighing heavily on molding and influencing a child, one must consider the community in which they live, i.e.: their school (especially their instructors); interaction with friends in and out of school; TV; video games; music; cell phones; social media; and their computer, via the internet. The most positive factor is that parents are in a favorable position to control their children’s involvement in these situations.
Many parents find offering their children a spiritual foundation is a priority as a means of providing them with a sense of morality, respect for humanity, and a relationship with God that will follow them throughout their lives. Make sure you cultivate a strong sense of self-worth and a determination in your child that they can succeed in all their endeavors if they work hard and persevere.
Teaching love and respect for others is paramount to molding well-rounded, altruistic, empathic, and productive young adults. Success usually follows children who feel good about themselves and are dedicated to serving others. Keep in mind that a child cannot truly love others if they don’t love themselves. When a child loves him/herself, there are many negative things they simply won’t do.
Children should be provided with a healthy and inviting atmosphere at home, conducive to learning and development. Your child should have positive family members and relatives such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, and godparents he or she can emulate. But most of all, your children should feel comfortable talking to you. They should feel you are their best listener and supporter, especially when they are trying to do the right thing in spite of what the rest of the world may be doing.
Young children’s interactions with their peers should be safe and supervised. Parents should surround their children with others who are warm, loving, and respectful. Enjoy the innocence that is associated with children at the early stages of their development. Laughter, interaction, and smiles should be constant reminders that they are well-adjusted and happy.
It is paramount that during the formative years, children are made to follow rules and instructions because it is basic for developing a structure that will aid them in their fluidity of learning. It is an accepted fact that if you can follow instructions, you can be successful in life. Discipline should shadow structure as two instrumental factors in raising productive, caring, and successful young adults.
Rewarding children for being positive, kind, and helpful can be accomplished with positive words of affirmation, a warm smile, or with a reassuring pat on the back. More time should be directed to acknowledging the positive things a child does. Avoid if possible dwelling on the negative. Leadership qualities should be ingrained at an early age. Your child should experience self-satisfaction from doing the right thing, regardless of what others do.
The key to realizing a positive outcome for your child is that you can’t wait until he/she is in middle school or high school to try to implement the practices mentioned above. All too often, that would be too late. Then trying to correct the problem is extremely difficult. Behavioral or emotional problems don’t usually show up without previous warning signs of impending problems. The formative years should be taken very seriously in evaluating steps going forward in determining your child’s social development and academic growth.
During the onset of pre-adolescence or adolescence, many children begin to manifest oppositional or defiant behavior contrary to what is acceptable or normal. Acceptance by their peers becomes their number one priority. Blind allegiance to questionable friends may temporarily usurp valuable advice given to children from loving parents.
Motivational speeches made by parents or adults offering guidance and direction to teenagers may fall upon deaf ears or become null and void when compared to the power of peer pressure. Let’s face it parents! Hormones and peer pressure are serious contenders, swaying many of our children away from us for a considerable period of time. However, there is hope for a peaceful transformation during this time if you have provided your children with positive influences from day one. At this stage of the game, your best game card is to monitor your children’s friends. Make sure they share the same values you have instilled in your own children.
Hopefully, the positive influences you provided during your children’s formative years will become a definitive part of their psyche that can help aid them as they navigate through their adolescent years. As the adage goes, a good child may stray and make mistakes—but if given a good foundation, he/she will eventually find his/her way home again.
