ONLY CHILD NEEDS TO BE SOCIALIZED BY HIS PEERS NOT ONLY PARENTS

ONLY CHILD NEEDS TO BE SOCIALIZED BY HIS PEERS NOT ONLY PARENTS

By Domenick J. Maglio PhD. Traditional Realist                             

Parents should be the most influential people in a child’s life. In our cultural meltdown there often are one or no biological parents raising their children. One-parent families are not optimal for all the responsibilities and wisdom are solely in one person’s hands. An increased number of grandparents have stepped in to take on this incredible responsibility with limited energy, vitality and longevity concerns.

As the American family shrank, the need for peers became more important for children as well as their family’s authority. The parents need to know how the child acts with others in specific situations and soon realize their child is not perfect. The child learns peers can act positively or can stab others in the back. The parent and child get educated through this experience.

As an only child, without siblings to interact with, it is harder to determine how and when the youngster will be more prone to lie, to defend himself, join in with the shenanigans of others or reject it all together. When parents observe their child with friends, they are better able to evaluate their behavior outside of the parent’s presence.  These informational observations assist the parents to open their eyes to realize the complexity of the child. This helps them gain a more mature and accurate understanding to arrive at better decisions with a child.

Modern children are at a significant disadvantage from those in the past. They have smaller families, more divorces, less direct and unsupervised interaction with their peers. Our culture is starting to become aware that today’s children’s major contact with their peers is through the Internet. Parents often have little knowledge of these online people and less what is transpiring in these conversations. Putting a child in adult supervised activities does not provide the parent with firsthand knowledge of the child’s social skills. The child is isolated from his peers in constantly supervised activities.  This does not allow the child to just be a kid.

The child has to learn how to react in social situations with their peers. There are many single child families who naturally do not have the opportunity to witness how their children interact with other children. Single children families often place the full burden of childrearing on themselves without other siblings, friends or elders sharing in this process. The parent figure has a void in understanding their child’s actions with others.

Our modern culture has limited the possibility of children mixing with others outside the home. Our suburban isolated living and dangers in the city streets have convinced parents to sign up the child in adult supervised activities instead of letting their children play unsupervised outside the home. These youngsters are not free to learn games and rules that have historically been passed down from one generation to another.

Most importantly, peers teach each other how to act in a group. When a child is initiated into a group of peers the youngster has to decide how to be accepted. Are they going to be friendly, aggressive, an observer, attempt to be a leader or a follower? They might try to be one kind of personality and wind up being perceived by the group as the exact opposite. This process is a great learning laboratory for every child to develop different aspects of their personality.

As the child matures he develops new relationships that open up new types of behavioral options.  This allows the youth to see the consequences of certain actions, which could help him make better choices to reach his goals. The experience with their peers helps them better focus on their vision and the direction they would like to take in the future.

This involvement with their peers also teaches the adult that the child acts differently in different situations. They begin to view youngsters more objectively and realistically. The parents realize in different situations the child acts differently depending on many variables. The ages of the peers, the setting, time of day, the activity and many other circumstances have a definite impact on the child’s behavior. Probably the most important lesson the parent learns is their child is neithger perfect or a future loser but a work in progress.

Conscientious parents are beginning to organize home events to select and get to know their child’s peers and the parents who drop them off. This organic process is growing to meet the modern family and child’s needs. They understand the importance of other children in their own child’s life.

Peers are an essential part of the equation in the child becoming a well-rounded social individual. Parents cannot do it all.

Domenick Maglio, PhD. is a columnist carried by various newspapers, an author of several books and owner/director of Wider Horizons School, a college prep program. Dr. Maglio is an author of weekly newspaper articles, INVASION WITHIN  and a new book entitled, IN CHARGE PARENTING In a PC World. You can see many of Dr. Maglio’s articles at www.drmaglioblogspot.com.