YOUR CHILD, A REFLECTION OF YOU?

THE human is a product of its own environment. It is an inevitable reflection that eventually plays itself out through character traits and behaviour. We are all indirectly programmed by our surroundings, whether consciously or unconsciously.

The environment in this case, can be categorised into multiple things, such as your living conditions, whether deplorable or conducive, the people you surround yourself with, the behaviour of the people you surround yourself with, the attitude of the people around you and the state of your surroundings and immediate areas. It is because of this that people usually make remarks such as ‘you act just like people from so and so’, or ‘you remind me of where I come from’. Unfortunately, as humans we can never really choose which traits to adopt from our environment, as some of them are adopted unconsciously, only showing up over time in our actions and behaviour.

Therefore, it is incredibly important to portray what you regard as good character traits in your home, your community, your workplace etc. This will prevent cases where parents put shackles on their children’s feet in an attempt to discipline them for ‘wayward’ behaviour, such as the story that inspired this article, which was published on Monday January 27 on pages 2 - 3.

Children are the most vulnerable when it comes to modelling what they observe in their environment. They learn the world through what they observe and reenact the observed behaviours, sometimes to their or their parents’ detriment. In some cases, when the environment is not conducive and the child is living in abject poverty, they are propelled by their circumstances to act delinquently. The main issue about this, is how the children are reprimanded when these behaviours and traits start to reflect.

Correct

Most of the time, parents almost always resort to corporal punishment or some other form of harmful discipline in a quest to correct deviant behaviour. This becomes a problem, as it sometimes leads to either the death of the child or extreme physical abuse.

The major issue is that parents are not looking at the bigger picture, that their children are a direct reflection of the environment they are exposing them to. Most are not aware that children adopt anything, whether good or bad. They don’t mind their language in front of children, they are abusive to other individuals in full view of the child, and they consume copious amounts of alcohol in the presence of the child, display actions of a sexual nature in front of them and so forth.

All this the child quickly adheres to and eventually displays through their own behaviour. This usually comes as a shock for their parents or guardians, who then exert extreme measures to reprimand the child without finding out the root cause and why the child is behaving the way they are, and if there’s anything in their surroundings that is enabling this kind of behaviour.

Behaviour

I used to think there was absolutely no way people were a product of their own environment until I started seeing parts of my mother in my own character and behaviour, such as having an excessive need for cleanliness at home, scolding naughty children and singing off-tune. This made me realise that as much as we say things like ‘angiyoze ngifane na’auntie mine’ we somehow eventually do, without even noticing.

This is particularly true for children as children copy everything you do and everything that is done around them, whether good or bad and they are also heavily influenced by the state of their environment.

Therefore, it’s easy to be quick to reprimand a child for deviant behaviour, but it is important to figure out where and how that sort of behaviour was acquired by the child, because even if you discipline them, if you do not address the root cause they will continue to be troublesome and be brought home by the police 29 times, similar to the seven-year-old boy whose story was published on Monday. Parents need to go back to the drawing board, to see whether or not the environment they place their children in is enabling their wayward behaviour. Think about it.

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