- While children are influenced by many things, there are no stronger influences that that of their parents as they are usually their child’s first playmates and while the world expands with each passing year, parental influence is still one of the greatest factors in determining the ways in which a child will grow and develop.
- Background.
Naturally parents will want to see their children do well. Sometimes though in an effort to keep their children safe parents inadvertently hold their children back from exploring the world around them, lessening their chances to learn and progress. While it is understandable to want to shelter children from harm, parents who are over protective can sometimes limit their child’s potential.
Ideally children should be given increasing amounts of freedom as they grow older and mature, allowing them to gradually learn new things and meet new people which in turn increases their physical, emotional and social development.
However there are many examples of the kind of influences that affect children and young people’s development, parents going through a marriage breakdown, separation and divorce proceedings can be very traumatic for a child. Children of one parent families may suffer as a single parent may not work or conversely work long hours, leaving the child with little support and open to bullying, or possibly no male role model to look up too. Children may become part of a step family, where a new partners may have children of their own from a previous relationship. This could lead to conflict or friction between the children and unhappiness for the child being picked on, leading to low self esteem, lack of confidence in their own abilities.
A parents attitude towards education and standards of education can have a detrimental effect on a child’s development. If the parents had a bad experience of the education