Parents' Role in Their Children's Growth

Family is the first human’s relationship, the place where they study language, roles, and adaption to their environment. As the children grow up, parents hold the role to establish (v = membangun) their character. It is important here because character building determines everyone’s future. Like father like son, a proverb (n = peribahasa) that tells us how important the parents’ role is. It is the childhood that contributes much in building the children’s character. When they are 5 years old or more, we can see that most of their activities are playing, crying, studying language, and learning to speak. That’s why parents should actually be more active in accompanying (v = mendampingi) their children while educating them as well. However it’s very contradictive if see today’s condition where many parents are confused on how to guide their children. 

There are a lot evidences we can see in our surroundings that prove haven’t understood how to be their children’s role models. Being absent from school, being lazy to study, quarreling, fighting, smoking, etc., are only some examples of how poor the parents’ concern (n = perhatian)on their children’s growth. They tend to (adv = cenderung)force their children to do what they think is right. For example, they want their children to study in an Islamic boarding school, hoping that their children will be more prevented from doing bad things while the children are not interested to study there. As a result, we often find the children do something inappropriate in their classes. In terms of psychology, children who get pressure from their parents will be difficult to socialize with others, be unfriendly and sometimes rough. 

According to finger print research, everybody has different capacity and talent. It means that we do not have to force somebody else to do what we want. Instead, find the things they like to do, then improve it and stick to it. If this thing goes well, both parents and children will have good communication and relationship. In addition, as Ayah Edi, a parenting consultant, said that everything comes from family and parents. In this case, it is obviously parents that should demonstrate their love through what they do every day. It’s not really necessary for them to feed (v = menyuap)their children everything because there a lot of things children can find by themselves. The only things that parents should do are to guide them and learn their improvement. Once they found something the children are interested in, then focus on it. That’s all what parents need to do.  

Glossary
establish (v): to succeed in making or creating (something)
proverb (n): a brief popular saying
accompany (v): to be included with something
concern (n) : something that a person is responsible for or involved in
tend to (adv): used to describe what often happens or what someone often does or is likely to do
feed (v) : to provide what is needed for the continued growth, operation, or existence of (something)

by Mardis Darwis | Civil Engineering of Moslem University of Indonesia