Steem4nigeria Accelerator Contest Week 53: Parental Enforcement of Decisions on Children

source

INTRODUCTION

Steemians, Parental enforcement of decisions on children, hhhmm! This is seriously a daunting and dangerous method of training children. Yes! Children are born without having their own initiative at first. At this stage of their lack of initiatives or inability to make decisions on their own, is a time to provide them with the right environment. The right environment here means setting up the required platforms that would help to bring out their inherent capabilities, which would enable them play their roles in the society and shape their future.

This little introductory background paves the way for me to deal with the issues or hints raised in this topic of discourse by the host.

MY RESPONSES/OPINIONS

source

Do you think it is okay for parents to influence the decisions of their children?

Well for me, I look at it from two perspectives:

• It is ok for parents to influence the decisions of their children before and in the course of setting up the right environment for their children. The reason to this is that, during the early stages the childrens' growth, they lack the capacity to take initiatives on their own to follow through life. They now need the guidance, direction and then follow instructions from their parents.

• It is not entirely okay for parents to influence the decisions of their children after they might have set up the right environment for the children to thrive.
  The reason to this is that at this stage, the children must have gained self awareness as discovering their capabilities and what they really want from life. The parents are to show the children how to make decisions and the eventual consequences of the decisions and not to have direct influence on the decisions of their children to avoid the children blaming them should the decisions backfire.

During the time of marriage or when deciding a course to study in school, what is the place of parents in giving their children guidance?

• Let me start with the place of parents in giving their children guidance when deciding on a course to study.

Parents are to guide their children based on their discovered strengths and weaknesses on various courses or subjects. That is to say that parents should guide their children by carefully observing their subject performances in school.

On the issue of marriage, parents are not to decide who their children should marry. They should rather focus on the capacities of their children and that of the other family to build a marriage would stand the test of time.

Can a parent actually misguide their children in decision making?

• Yes, a parent can actually misguide his/her children. Collective parental inputs are necessary while parenting. Collective parenting enables the parents examine and cross-examine the parenting method or approach they that each of the could use. Infact, there would be checks and balances which would ensure that the the children would not be misguided. What I'm trying to say here is that there is a tendency to misguide children in single parenting than the collective parenting.

Do you have any experience of your parents enforcing decisions for you against your will or experience of someone you know?

Yes I do! A friend of mine is having such experience. He is the only child and the parents are on his neck to get married. He acknowledges the fact that he is the only child and understands the reason he is being pressured to get married at an earlier age.
But for him, he understands that he is not yet emotionally and mentally matured to get into marriage. The parents being aware this, still mounts pressure on him to get married.

CONCLUSION

source

Providing the needed environment for children to thrive is necessary. During the early stages of their lives when they lack the capacity to take initiatives, is when parental influences on their decisions, are mostly effective.

Parents should also realize that a time comes when they need to relax their influences on their childrens' decisions because the children are now becoming aware of what they really want out of life. At this time, the parents are to highlight the relative consequences of the decisions that the children might be taking. This would enable the to avoid being blamed by the children when the decisions backfires.

This is my input to this very topic and I hope more steemians would join me so as to do justice to the discourse. On this note, I invite the the following persons to make their contributions to this topic: