Being a parent is one of the most wonderful yet interesting roles in life. Sad to say, many people can easily become parents, but they do not truly understand what it takes to be a good parent.
In most cases, these parents do not realize why is parenting so important to child development. They think that as long as they feed their children, provide a comfortable shelter, give them enough money, send them for education, buy toys and bring them out on holidays, they have fulfilled their parenting responsibilities.
We’d hate to burst the bubble but no, that is not the definition of good parenting. Parenting children requires sacrificing lots of time and effort to nurture kids into becoming people with good morality, manners and discipline. That said, let us explore more about the importance of parenting skills below.
The Wrong Notion on Parenting and Informal Education
Parenting is synonymous with informal education at home while attending school is formal education. Informal education at home means training children to be disciplined, have good manners, show respect to elders and be obedient to all laws and orders. This informal education at home can only be materialized if the child is instilled from a young age such as since infancy or as early as pre-school age.
However due to time, environment and condition changes, many parents today think that parenting their children is to be done in school. Many parents are confused with inculcating discipline in school is the same with parenting at home.
The actual correct notion is that, schools are institutions of academic learning and theoretical knowledge. Schools only act as a guidance to basic knowledge of living, with a heavy emphasis on the hard skills to prepare these kids for the career world.
And the real situation is that, instilling discipline at home is required before sending children to school. Unfortunately, most parents treat the situation the other way around, which is one of the biggest reasons why many children are always facing disciplinary actions in school. This is the fallacy of modern parents’ thinking.
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Common Parenting Issues Observed In Today’s Society
Today, we can witness many common parenting issues revolving around parental involvement in early child development. Some of the common bad scenarios that are rampantly happening include:-
- Parenting roles being passed to grandparents and babysitters: Many parents take for granted that they can leave all the difficult parenting phases to the grandparents and babysitters while wanting to maintain a strong parent-child relationship with their kids minus their parental involvement. This is totally wrong – parenting can only be done by the parents themselves and not by any other people such as grandparents and babysitters. In fact, the latter is the worst contributing factor to destabilizing the parent’s role in parenting.
- Being brought up in an uncaring broken home or family: Another bad situation contributing to parenting issues is the absence of parenting when children are brought up by either neglectful parents, step-parents or foster parents. These children are mostly deprived of a good upbringing when the child is living in such a broken home or broken family, or in a divorced family setting.
- Children being left to their own devices due to parents always being away for work: Due to modern advanced technology and the rapid pace of today’s world, both the father and mother are working to overcome the high cost of living. This causes the children to be lonely and unguided at home, often left to play and do things on their own without much parental supervision and care. These children are oblivious to good informal education at home, and may grow up to mix with the wrong people and later on become problematic individuals in the society.
Why Is Parenting So Important?
It is worthwhile to take a look at those children who have good parenting at home and comparing to others who do not have any proper parenting. A child who has good parenting or informal education when young will grow up to have principles in manner, responsibilities in task and integrity in character. A well-parented child will also display a sense of independence, self-reliance and good development of civic consciousness.
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On the other hand, the untold miseries of a non-parented child are when these neglected children grow up, there is a high tendency for them to become great litter bugs, practice bad habits such as not flushing the toilet bowl after use, being indisciplined in life, lazy, and lost in direction of living. Most will become parasites in the society.
In this modern era where children without good upbringing are rampant, this is why we will witness a lot of unreasonable street protests and strikes, as well as the growing number of scammers, casanovas, drunk drivers, selfish politicians, impersonators plus corruption everywhere. This is why the importance of good parenting must not be overlooked.
Final Thoughts on The Importance of Good Parenting
Parenting should never be misunderstood as it does not pertain to any accord of status, wealth or rank. Good parenting always stands on neutral ground and does not have any special needs or circumstances.
One does not have to be rich or wealthy to provide good informal education at home nor does it mean any poor parent will be deprived of the ability to perform good parenting. On the contrary, many rich and wealthy parents have bad reputations for neglecting their children at home or showering their kids with monetary items as replacements for their genuine parental love and care.
It is equally distorting to believe that poor parents are not able to give good parenting at home due to their struggles to make end meets. This largely depends on each parent’s initiative and determination to educate their kids to help them grow up to become useful, helpful and law-abiding citizens.
The beautiful thing about parenting is that everyone can easily perform this informal education at home. The only criteria for achieving this good parenting at home are parents must be willing to allocate some time in educating their children on good discipline, good manners, respect for others, and obedience to law and order.
At the same time, parents must also sacrifice some good effort and energy to their children to ensure their children will always get the best attention in both communication and affection, thus creating a strong parent-child bond in the process.