by Shannon Lawrence

Created on: September 10, 2009   Last Updated: September 11, 2009

As any parent can tell you, children are constantly testing their surroundings and figuring out just how they fit in with them. It is a parent's job to form these children, to teach them their limits when they're examining the world around them, and to guide them through it. Children are a product of their environment, and everything that entails. The younger they are, the more the parents influence and shape them. Eventually, teachers, their peers, and other people in their lives will become a part of this force that creates who they are, but parents are the very first guides and, ultimately, the most important.

When children misbehave, it is for a variety of reasons. They are learning and growing so rapidly, and the world is a big place. Sometimes, misbehavior isn't really that at all, but simply an experiment or a byproduct of something else. At those times, there is no one to blame. However, when a younger child actually shows severe or chronic misbehavior, it must be traced back to the source, at least in most instances. That source is their parents.

Parents teach children right from wrong. They also teach them how to behave, both in private and around other people. A child cannot know they are doing wrong until they are given the tools that allow them to figure that out on their own. Who equips them with these tools? The parents or guardians do. If they have failed at teaching a child how to behave and to know right from wrong then they have failed that child. These will be the building blocks for how they approach their lives every day, and for how they make decisions that affect their lives and others'. As cliche as it may seem, life is one decision after another, and it is these choices that shape our very lives. Parents must arm their children in such a way as to allow them to lead their own lives without anyone else's guidance; they must be able to make good choices that will take them to the next part of their lives.

The older a child is, the more responsibility they must take onto themselves for their own actions. Even then, though, the parents have some part in how they are behaving. After all, it is their parents who helped them reach this point, and who set them up for how they react to things and choose their actions. The older they are, the more that line blurs, eventually flipping over and placing the blame, at least primarily, on the "child."

This is the natural course of things. Parents shape their children and, hopefully, arm them with all the right tools, thus allowing them to make good choices, grow, learn, and become successful adults. Parents must take responsibility for how their children grow, and even what type of adults they become. In the meantime, how they behave in childhood is equally important, and a good indication of what still needs work in order to give them the success they deserve. Parents need to pay attention to these cues, as every child deserves that chance in life.

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