The Effects of Childhood Upbringing on an Individual

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Most contemporary theories recognize that both biological and environmental factors influence child development, but they disagree about the relative importance of each of these factors for development or the balance between the influences. Today, there are no theories that support either of these arguments. All aspects of a man's life - his character, sense of responsibility, good and bad habits, ability to cope with difficulties, are primarily shaped during his childhood. The bright memories of his childhood can strengthen and warm a man during trying times, and, contrarily, those who have not had a happy childhood can in no way remake it. When we meet an orphan who has never had parental affection, or a step-son or step-daughter whose broken spirits are a result of difficulties at home, we can sense in them the imprint of painful early impressions. Children intentionally try to understand and explore the world about them. They are widely featured in the media most of the time and for good or bad, a child's lifestyle and actions mostly compromise from their upbringing. Socializing agents such as parents, peers, or teachers do not simply mold the child. Instead, children actively influence and modify the actions of their parents and other people with whom they interact. It is an important process to how they are brought up and how the society affects them since they are the future and the main pillars of the country. Child upbringing usually leads to the change in the children's abilities and behaviours as they develop. Therefore, before this becomes an alarming issue, the research team decides to come up with a proposal to see how important child upbringing is towards an individual physically, mentally and emotionally. As child upbringing can lead to various ways, we are mainly focusing on the attachment between the child and the care-giver, education , actions taken by the government regarding child abuse and providing knowledge regarding child rearing as well as parenting.

Case Study:

Roger is a growing teenager at the age of 17 and faces multiple discipline problems. He has the habit of picking on others, cursing, threatening to kill teachers, threatening to kill administrators, fighting with peers, jumped out of moving school bus to fight, spitting on peer and facing emotional depression whenever he fails to obtain something in his delight. To overcome his emotional anger, he picks on students younger than his age and smaller in comparative to him. He has been known to be a bully in his school and education seemed to be the last thing on his mind. He enjoys the misery of others and does not realise the beauty of the environment around him.

He was placed in residential treatment facility on an emergency basis. Because of insurance issues, he is released in 48 hours. This placement was done by law enforcement and health agencies after a blow up at home. Soon the name roger became blacklisted in school and he was forced to attend counselling sessions in disregard of his preference. A child psychologist in his school decided to communicate with him in order to help him solve all his problems. The psychologist then realised that it isn't Rogers fault that he is turning out to be who he is.

It is the way that he has been brought up that lead to his actions that are mere acts of disguise towards his real personality. The psychologist soon discovered that he has been traumatised during his childhood days and now he is having a strong self of insecurity. His parents abandoned him at the time he was born and he was grown up in an orphan house. He enjoyed picking on others because he was always the main target since he was young and to Roger, life is just about proving who's in control.

Roger has reached a level whereby at the age of 17, he does not see the point of working or studying as he can easily obtain money by picking on others. Friendship does not stand in his eye and he only sees friendship as pure peer competence. Even though after the counselling session, roger finds expressing himself totally pointless and the school has assigned for him to attend counselling sessions 5 days in a week.

The Effects of a Poor Childhood Upbringing

The above story is a typical case of a student that had experienced poor childhood upbringing. To most of the people, they categorize this as attitude problems within a child but the child is actually the victim of the way they were brought up. In this case, Roger was an orphan and love and affection has never been showered to him.

He picks on others as he was being picked when he was young and his actions are mainly to cover his self-insecurity. He experiences emotional disorder because he does not know whom he could relate his problems to and the only way of solving it is by venting on others. In addition, the importance of education was never highlighted to him thus, making him feel that education does not create much significance in life.

The importance of childhood upbringing can be greatly shown through this case study because if no action was taken, Roger would end up wasting most of the time in his life. Severe cases of poor childhood upbringing can even lead to an adult being a criminal. If the community decides to work together in order to provide and give a great upbringing towards all the kids in the world, burglary issues and crime rates would be widely decreased.

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

The major deterioration of morale in our community nowadays causes many political, economical and social problems. One good example would be the level of crime rate among our nation that not only involves adults, but even children. The level of severity that has succumbed to our community is widely increasing every year, and parents, guardians, and care-givers are being questioned by the media whether a parenting class is necessary in order for them to be suit for the job of the exemplary role model for their children. Parents are paying less attention to their child's performance and "affection" is mostly showered through valuables and money, abusive acts under the influence of alcohol, ignorance on a child's productivity and the lack of emphasis on a child's education. The community should ask themselves; do the kids actually deserve this? Did they ask to be born? Why are we treating them this way? The major percentage of citizens that live a sedentary lifestyle chose to gamble or enjoy a game of golf then taking their time to educate their children. Child abuse has also become an alarming issue whereby more and more children are suffering due to brutality.