PARENTS SHOULD ALLOW CHILDREN TO GROW WITHOUT THEIR INTERVENTION - ESSAY QUESTION

As the popular saying goes, “Teenagers are the most misunderstood people on earth. They are treated like children and expected to act like adults.” the age in between immaturity and maturity can be quite an influential time for children as well as their parents. Parents think it is a crucial time for them to impose their authority as parents on their children and guide them more strictly whilst teenagers think it is vital for them in this particular era of their lives to attain independence on their journey to adulthood.  This is the chapter of their lives is where children go through a lot, psychologically and emotionally. Emotions can be inconsistent as teens learn to deal with school, their friends, and adult expectations. Teenager’s self-esteem is mostly affected by success in school, sports, and friendships. Teens tend to compare themselves with others, and they might form false ideas about their body image. The influence of TV, magazines, and the Internet can add to a teen's poor body image. 

“Mutual respect is important to teens,” says adolescent psychiatrist Meg van Achtenberg. In contrast to when your teens were children, the way you relate to them may be fundamentally uncomfortable, providing your teens with greater autonomy as they grow essentially means learning a new way to care for them. The learning curve will be well worth your time and effort; however, rewarding you with natural camaraderie. For parents, the teen years are a time to get to know their teenager. While teens are maturing, they still need a parent's affection and supervision. In this crucial age, teenagers often come into contact with different people. Their brains develops along with their body, also the hormonal changes occur. It is common and natural process happens with every child. Thus, parents should interfere in the growth of their children but it is somewhat crucial in this time period of being a teenager for parents and parents to hold mutual respect for each other, and for parents to only interfere when they think it is highly important for them to interfere. This stage is a stage for parents to let their children to learn from their own mistakes, but it is also important that they keep an eye on them from afar to stop them from committing mistakes that will ruin them.

To remain uninvolved or to interfere is a fragile question. It can be a fine line for parents to draw – between respecting their adolescent’s ownership of troubles, or to intervene and rescue to stay the harm. In an adolescent’s life there is imminent danger, when there is a pattern of self-defeating behavior, when actions are becoming self-destructive; these are times when parents may want to interfere

For example in a case of forthcoming danger; suppose parents have a shy middle school-er who has been constantly tailed around by a taunting bully, with other students starting to join in the name calling and harassing too? As a parent, do you let the youngster learn to deal with it by themself, suffer from loss of esteem and security, and perhaps risk more grave possibilities? Or do you decide to interfere? For example, do you coach him about violating the bully’s prediction by encouraging your child to try being less emotionally reactive or more socially assertive -- responses that might make the torment less satisfying to give? And if that doesn’t stay the harm, with his permission do you contact the principal to get the bullying to stop?

Suppose you have a highly social middle school daughter who doesn’t want time spent doing homework to get in the way of communicating with her friends, and now zeroes for assignments not turned in are resulting in failing grades? As a parent do you do nothing, let her learn a self-defeating habit, and risk her learning that not doing schoolwork and failing some of her classes is okay? Or do you decide to interfere? Over her objections, do you sufficiently supervise homework being brought home, adequately accomplished, and faithfully turned in so she does not allow less academic motivation, common at this age, to result in a slackening of effort and a lowering of grades that will limit academic options to come?

Suppose you have socially and sexually mature looking high school freshman who is welcomed by a faster crowd of older students among whom recreational substance use is the norm, and now the young woman is making risky choices of a careless and uncaring kind that suggests she is drug using too? As a parent, do you do nothing, let her choose to get into serious trouble, and then hopefully learn from the errors of her wilder ways? Or do you decide to interfere? Do you give her the protection of your prohibitions that limit her social freedom so she has a choice to follow a safer way, and do you get her substance use assessed to determine to what degree if any it is having a personally and socially disorganizing effect? And if indicated, do you mandate some form of counseling or treatment so she can recover a more sober way?

There’s a lot written about over-parenting, hovering parenting, “helicopter” parenting, invasive parenting that suggests parental letting go is the preferred strategy of choice in their child’s perspective but it may not be the strategy in general. We are told how parental letting go permits adolescents to build sovereignty, how figuring out their problems, builds resourcefulness, and how confronting the consequences of their choices builds responsibility. And to an important degree all this can be so. However, it is a matter of degree. Although parental non-interference is often a good policy, it is not always the best one, and parents must be able to make this discrimination.

 

Parents interfere with their child’s life for a variety of reasons. In every case, their interference stems from a feeling of entitlement toward the grown child. The parent feels that, by dint of giving birth to and nurturing their child, they have the right to have some say in their child's life through adulthood. Over the last decade, research has reaffirmed that parents play a defensive role in the lives of budding adults. Pre-adolescence is a peer-oriented stage; however, parents are much more influential on the lives of their teens than they believe. Youth self-report states that their parents affect the decisions they make. In fact, the positive effects of parenting adolescents strategically outcomes are not diminished by the presence of “deviant peers,” suggesting that parents can outweigh the influence of negative peer relations on a teenager’s life.

Research indicates that children and teens raised in homes in which parents are characterized as authoritative or “positive” show strong health advantages such as: lower engagement in risky sexual behavior, lower smoking and other substance use initiation, healthier dietary and physical activity behaviors, higher self-esteem, lower incidence of major depression, and fewer suicide attempts, higher academic performance, and lower delinquency and incarceration rates.

If a 15 year old says, “I will major in Math, as my friends are doing the same” It is NOT good to let the “adolescent” do it. It is better to educate that one needs to know what one is interested, inclined and likes to do, help that person realize his/her own interests and help them take a decision on “proper” grounds and move on with life. Parents play an important role in molding their adolescent's behavior. Supporting the decisions of kids with proper guidance/mentorship/parenting is not “interfering”! And this has nothing to do with age!

Parents' and teenagers' morals, future aspirations, and self-control are typically quite similar. Talking encourages family togetherness and increases the likelihood teens will share parents' values.

 

To be honest, I won’t lie to you, saying that I was a good girl who loved her parents constantly prying into her life. In fact I was the complete opposite; I hated them for constantly nagging me and meddling in my life, in fact at one point I even saw them as my enemy for them kept restraining me from my journey to freedom. But I guess it was just the melodramatic hormonal changes that acted on me as it does to everyone. Subsequently, it was later on in the late adolescence that it befell to me that it was their intrusion that kept me going steady through all the tragedy of bullying, depression, anxiety, stress, suicidal attempts, peer pressure and the drop self-esteem from how high adults expectations are to achieve.

We all want our point of view respected, and teenagers are no different.  Parents need to treat them more like adults than children, by truly listening and heeding to their point of view, even if they disagree vehemently.  Tough as it is, welcoming disagreement in a spirit of humility is foundational. Many parents develop a codependency with their child- always trying to control them, telling them what’s best and getting extremely involved in their business. Parents who exert too much control over their children could be causing them lifelong psychological mutilation, according to a study which tracked a group of people born in the 1940s till date.

As a juvenile expresses their autonomy from family during mid-adolescence,
their parents will know their child less than they ever have. The child’s emotional distance will be matched by physical distance, too. He/she won’t want to be seen with you if they can avoid it, especially when friends might be nearby. It’s hard to project coolness in front of their networks when their mom is asking for a kiss goodbye at the bus stop. Parents are advised to respect this increasing desire for space whenever possible. As they are trying to figure out where they belong, they may hang on tenuously to one group, switch to another group voluntarily, or get unceremoniously dropped from the group they wants to be with. All of this turmoil can unleash some intense emotions that need to be vented to a safe and understanding parent.

Parents should not interfere with their children's choice. Indeed, children must be self-reliant so they must learn from their own mistakes. Moreover, this is their child's life, so they should lead it the way they want. They have to make their own choices, learn from their faults, and construct their own life experiences. On growth now the child turns slowly to the edge of adolescence where his actions start changing, and this is the right time to stop interfering in their life, but not 100%. Silently yet, strictly the parents should monitor their activities, and know whenever obligatory should definitely interfere in their life.

Adolescence is a time when independence and parental influence clash, since teens are able to think on their own but still live with parents who have rules and expectations for them.

 

Even though as Dave Barry once said that “to an adolescent there is nothing in the world more embarrassing than a parent”, pre-adolescents need the guidance of their parents, and when I say ‘guidance’ it doesn’t mean reading their child’s diary, directly confronting them if something you dislike is written there. Pre –adolescence is the official time for children to be frustrated between right and wrong, but it is also the time for them to make wrong decisions and learn from them, but at certain times they will feel muddled and could make decisions that would ruin their lives for better or worse. This era in their lives is when their senses are more alert and curious to explore new experiences, some that may scar them for life therefore parents should intervene before major problems occur, were the steering wheel of their child’s life is in neither in their control nor their child’s. There are major penalties they could face are such as bulling, cyber bullying, joining gangs, facing teen pregnancy, underage sex, drinking and smoking, mental disorders as well as depression and anxiety which could lead to suicide.

Furthermore the teenage brain is by far the sharpest one, but most misused. Teenagers are nothing but adults, who aren’t quite sure about what to do with their lives. They find it tricky to cultivate focus. This in-turn leaves them more vulnerable to getting into the wrong path. They are easily influenced by almost everything that surrounds them. “Should I do it or not?” we all would have asked ourselves this question at many junctions of our life. Teenagers are also prone to imprudent behavior and are not afraid to be different. Numerous stimuli are positive, leading them to become better individuals, while others have adverse effects on their progress, growth and behavior. Often sucked into the influence, minors are often found resorting to alcohol, drugs, in a futile endeavor to ease themselves from glitches.

Parents are the most influential idols for teenagers; they imitate them more than they think they do. What parents do and say directs their child's behavior, attitudes and beliefs, now and in the long term. They can be exemplary role models by including their child in family discussions, living a healthy lifestyle, being positive, taking responsibility for your actions and more. It’s part of a parent’s job to counsel, advise, and set limitations for their teenagers well being by embedding biblical values in them.

 

Throughout history, parents have encroached into their children's privacy because they thought that if they didn’t, their children would certainly face snags and fiascoes. This issue is controversial: some people believe that parents should not interfere in their children's choices. Children should be able to determine the way they want to shape their own future. Contrary to this belief, some people think that parents should have a say in the choice of their children's future. The first argument put forth against this issue is that children should have a right to decide for their own lives.

Some people maintain that children should make their own choices, which in turn would make them happier. This idea may be accurate to some extent. Nevertheless, parents have the pro of having a vaster and richer life experience. They can help their wards to decide on whether or not their choice is right, it is thanks to this life’s experience.

Besides, parents have faced many hitches throughout their life, which expanded their insight. This makes them more realistically adapted to find solutions to complications in life easily. Hence it determines to me that pre- adolescence is an age that parents should monitor their offspring from afar and intervene only when required and not as much as they did when they were younger, to give their child to experience this stage of evolution by allowing them to face trials firsthand but to also to come to their salvage if their plight asks for it.