Have you asked yourself a question concerning how some people in your society or area are behaving? Whether they are your friends, family or even people you have not set your eyes on before but have heard of on the various social media platforms. Do you see insults in their comments on specific contents, or do they try to cope with things? How often do you ask such questions because day by day, people undertake certain attitudes and behaviours which may not be conformity with the normal human being? For this reasons, it can be seen that all people are not the same but different! Some people smile, laugh, drink, joke, dance, and many more but that is not all, other people too have the direct opposite of such attitudes. And in the African and almost every part of the world, this is where people will began asking of ‘how was this person raised’, and that is where the concept of parenting sets in.
Becoming a parent is something very easy a person can find him or herself but not easy in taking up responsibilities especially the basic ones. Raising a child is a whole long journey which has it’s own ups and downs due to the fact that, if carefulness is not assured, the children will one day grew to become a burden on not only yourself but also the whole society as well. For this reason, people from all walks of life do apply certain social and cultural aspects of lifestyles in bringing up their future generations, education therefore plays an important role in taking this task. Thus informal education which is that of the parents together with the formal education which is based on schools curriculum becomes the most important of all other ways.
When raising up a child, there is the need to apply certain strategies that will lead to better outcomes out of their actions and inactions everywhere they find themselves rather than going too harsh on them like beatings. From all the above mentioned avenues of bringing up a child well for the benefit of the society at large, below are some crucial peripheries of training that these entities do apply in bringing up children which will most of the time yield much positive results and prevent waywardness in children;
Advice
An advice can be any given dialogue exchanged from one person to another with the motive of offering a change to the life of a person or receiver. People do advice themselves through their inner spirits based on certain situations they have experienced over a period. When someone is been given advice, it helps serve as a regulatory aspect of their lives whenever they face certain life situations. Parents can thus can apply this technique in their parenting skills to direct the minds of their children towards to right path instead of doing something too harsh.
Punishment
When it comes to our daily lives, one of the most used techniques in dealing with unwanted behaviours is through punishment. Punishment can thus be explained as anything a teacher or parents does to children with the aim of limiting or decreasing the occurrence of such unwanted behaviour. There can be positive punishment and negative punishment. Positive punishment means increasing a situation in order to limit a behaviour example, you will sweet the whole compound if you go to the road, whilst negative punishment means decreasing a situation in order to limit a behaviour example if you go to the road, you will not go for break time. When such conditions are set in partner with some unwanted behaviours you child is demonstrating, it will disregard them from doing it since their work load can be increase or their resting time will be taken from them as elaborated earlier.
Reinforcements
Reinforcement is simply applying a specific conditions to certain situations in order to increase a specific behaviour you want the child to imbibe. With this, parents only expectation is to see an improvement in the lives of their ward. There is therefore the positive and negative reinforcement, the former is based on adding some conditions in order to increase the behaviour whilst the later is taking out certain conditions to increase a behaviour example, I will give Kojo five balls if he the write notes versus Kojo was given two balls because he did not write the notes. From this, the preferred outcome the instructor wants is to get the notes written so the instructor wants to reinforce/increase Kojo’s will to write by either giving him or taking out the balls.
Rewards
A reward is something people receive as a result of doing something good. Reward is therefore given in order to enable someone repeat an accepted behaviour at a time. Through this, parents can take this style of parenting by giving their children some gift in order to cause them repeat incidents which are beneficial and deemed acceptable by the society.
Guidance and counseling
Although people are not the same due to the fact that, each and everyone has his or special characters yet still, if someone attitude does not tally with the norms, it is not the end. Providing assistance to children through step by step guidance and counseling can enable children switch their nature of thinking and what they do. This is one of the best because, providing guidance enables to the child to think vividly on his or her previous behaviour which will direct his or her path on what to do in the future. This can be link to a gradual process of giving advice to the children but guidance and counseling must be of practical. Parents must make sure to see improvements in the child’s attitude towards situations in order to evaluate whether the child has conformed or still need some time.
This and many more are various ways we can apply as parents or guardians to our offspring. Children can be said to be having an empty head right from birth and it becomes the duty of the parents to direct the actions of the child with time. Let us all do well to bring the best out of our children because the future of the country hinges on them as they will also pass onto their unborn generations. Thank you.