Is There A Manual For Raising Good Children?

Recently, I had a conversation with @hopestylist about the complexities of raising a child. Raising good children is not something easy to do. It requires dedication, commitment, patience, and prayer. Sometimes, these things can be in place and the child will still turn out to be a rotten egg. Are some children destined to be bad, while others are destined to be good no matter the environment they find themselves in or the people they get mixed with? While Hopestylist is of the opinion that no child is destined to be bad and that it is the actions of the parents that determine how a child will turn out, I am of the school of thought that some children, no matter how well you train them, will still turn out to be bad. But that doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t put in the effort at all. In my opinion, more than 80% of the reasons why children turn bad is because the parents fail to fulfill their responsibilities.

Do people learn to be good or bad or are they born that way? Growing up, there was a family in our neighborhood. The parents were workers in church. The children were rarely seen outside and their voices were hardly heard. Well, except for one of them. He was always causing trouble in the neighborhood. Sometimes, you wonder if he was truly one of their children or maybe they adopted him. Sometimes, good children come out of terrible homes and at the same time, bad children come out of good homes. There’s no straightforward answer to this but there are some things to do to make sure your child becomes a good person. For today’s Hive Learners’ prompt, the community asks if there is a blue print for how not to have a bad child.

Everyone wants a good child. I’m pretty sure if there was a way parents could alter their children’s DNA and remove the negative energy, a lot of parents would grab that chance, but unfortunately, there is no way to do that for now. When it comes to raising good kids, the responsibility falls on the parents. First off, one important question to ask is: are the parents good? Children are mirrors of their parents. You can expect a child who grows up in a home where the father and mother are always throwing punches and hitting themselves, not to do the same when they become older.

Some parents might think children are not wise and that their brains are still “small” to process things, but children are smart. They watch, learn and recreate. The first step to raising good kids is to be good parents. It is very important that parents try as much as they can not to argue or fight in the presence of their children. Little fights will always happen in a home. But there is a way parents can settle things amicably in a way that the children will not notice.

Another way to make sure your child is a good person is to correct them whenever they make mistakes. Mothers, particularly those who go through painful deliveries or those who had to wait for years before they got a baby, are more attached to their children. These types of parents don’t like it when you correct their children. While this is understandable, it is not the best way to go about things. Children will somehow make mistakes and it is only right that they are corrected. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” For example, if a child steals something and the parents let them go repeatedly, the child will eventually think stealing is normal.

Raising good or bad children isn't really a matter of chance. The actions of the parents play a significant role in shaping their lives. When parents do their part well, there's a very high possibility (more than 80%, in my opinion) that the child will turn out well.

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Thanks for reading.