Children need models, not critics

By Lionel WIJESIRI

According to the Child Development and Women Affairs Ministry, the cases of child abuse in Sri Lanka have increased over the past decade. Deputy Child Development and Women Affairs Minister M.L.A.M. Hisbullah told Parliament recently that 15,158 child abuses cases have been reported in the past five years.

Police sources indicate that in the last year alone, 1,085 child rape cases and 1,503 child molestation and abuse cases have been reported. The National Child Protection Authority had received more than 20,000 complaints related to children last year.

A happy family

One of the main reasons for the increase in child abuse has been identified as insecurity of children due to parental neglect. Parental neglect of children is not a widely studied subject, but the scientific literature reports that many negligent parents were themselves neglected when they were children.

However, there is very little information about the psychosocial mechanisms involved in this inter-generational transmission, and preventive interventions for this risk population are few and far between.'

Email

A few days ago, I received an email message from one of my young nieces. She is married and has two teenage children. Both parents are employed in managerial positions and financially stable.

The mail said: “Thank goodness we are never “done”!

Each day of our lives we have opportunity upon opportunity to grow and develop into who we really want to be - isn’t that exciting? I have taken an intentional look at what I am modelling for my children and how I can make appropriate changes to model positive behaviour. By practising staying calm in heated situations and staying connected to frustrating situations I am developing closer relationships with my children. That is surely worth all my extra hard work and effort! We cannot expect our children to display behaviour if we cannot even have control over it ourselves”.

The message made me sit up and think. It was a philosophical note and a kind of a revelation.

Investing time

A child is what we make of him and what he sees of us – elders. He can never learn by our criticisms of him but the examples we give to him. A child needs models is evident from our lay research and survey of the last two generations.

The study will confirm to us that a child continuously learns from what he sees and not from what is said to him.

The best thing to invest in a child is time. We know that the first six years of your child's life are crucial.

Those are the years that your child will develop significant intellectual, emotional and social abilities. That's when they learn to give and accept love.

They learn confidence, security, and empathy … they learn to be curious and persistent … everything your child needs to learn to relate well to others, and lead a happy and productive life. The first six years are the doorway to forever!

So, we must always emphasise the positive, for as it is said ‘if a child lives with criticism he learns to condemn, but if a child lives with appreciation he learns to commend’.

If he lives with care he will learn to love and true education is the cultivation of the heart. The cultivation of love is the greatest need of today.

Fast pace

However, education today is a process of filling the mind with the contents of books, emptying the contents in the examination hall and returning empty-headed.

We fail to realise that human values cannot be learnt from lectures or textbooks.

Those who seek to impart values to students must first practise those values themselves and set an example.

Today, life has become fast paced and we have become materialistic. Parents are too busy to answer the queries of their curious children. Reprehension and criticism have trampled their search for knowledge and truth.

Moreover, since the development of NASA almost 50 years ago most human resources are being put to the cause of unearthing the truths of the universe.

We have taken giant leaps in the field of science and technology but in this process the progress of our future generations is being hampered. Technology has uprooted our moral disposition and education is debasing students rather than enabling them.

Instead of shaping the young into diamonds, it is turning them into coal. It is not bringing transformation in them, it is not bestowing wisdom.

Teaching morals

Teaching your child good morals may be one of the greatest challenges of parenthood. Morals are complex and abstract, and are a concept that is often difficult for children to grasp. And because morals can differ across cultures and religions, it can be even more complex to explain to children why the morals your family lives by are important and valuable.

Children are often ruled by emotion and by a desire to be liked and fit in, which can lead to poor moral decisions.

But children who are taught moral values early and regularly are more likely to develop the sense of conscience needed to make them think twice before they respond.

All children will make mistakes and behave poorly at times; the important thing is to use these bad decisions as a learning opportunity.

A child's moral growth is an on-going process, and all children slip up from time to time.

You still have a tremendous influence on your child's behaviour. Allow your child to learn from mistakes and use those errors in judgment as a chance to reinforce your values.

Remember that although your children will eventually turn to friends, especially in the early years parents are the number one model they turn to for an example of how to behave.

“We might tell our children how to act in the world and how to behave, but they absorb our behaviour like a sponge and usually model it,” points out Dr. Thomas Plante, Professor of Psychology at Santa Clara University. Morals are an area where there can be no compromise; make it your goal to behave in a moral fashion at all times. If you can’t do so, you certainly can’t expect your children to.

Simple steps

Raising a moral child in a difficult world takes some effort, but these simple methods will make it easier:

* Teach your child the morals you would like them to live by from a very young age
* Use moral missteps as an opportunity for learning and reinforcing values
* Be a model of moral behaviour in everything you do.
* Remember that morals are taught over time, and reinforced throughout a lifetime

Teaching your child good morals and values is a challenge for every parent, but this fundamental area of everyday life can be passed on from parent to child.

Focus on teaching morals early and reinforce them at every opportunity, and don’t forget to stand as an example yourself.

We have to remember that the child must be taught what is right by means of moral lessons, but that would not be enough, this must be followed by showing what is right by live example by elders around the child.

Even the latest and modern techniques of teaching and education lay stress on audio-visual aids, which goes to confirm that the child learns more and better by what he sees around by way of examples in front of him, and what he hears in the world of elders.

No amount of lecturing and ordering can imbibe in the child any value of life. A child learns all that he sees and nothing that he is ordered.

Mother Teresa once said: “Capture the child and you’ve conquered the future.”