GROWİNG UP

When we are young, the house where we live is our whole world. Everything is provided for us food and shelter,warmth and love.We obey parents without question,because if mummy and daddy say it, it must be right.Every experience we have is classified as good or bad according to their reaction. We quickly learn to do those things which earn their praise, and to avoid those things which upset them and earn their disapproval.
As we grow older, we are more and more exposed to outside influences school, friends and other adults. We soon start to realise that there are other values which are different from those our parents hold. For example, your parents have told you that some words are swear words, and they have forbidden you to use them.However, in your friend’s house,everyone use such words and they seem to think that there is nothing wrong with it. You are confused; you wonder what the right thing to do is. You try to resolve the conflict of values between two groups of people your parents on the one hand, and your friend’s parents on the other for whom you have equal respect. Eventually what happens is that we start to lead double lives; we reserve some forms of behaviour for the home, and others for the worlds outside the home.
The real conflict starts when we reach adolescence. We begin to question everything and everyone, including our parents and their values, because we want to establish our own independent values. Unfortunately, as long as we are living at home and are dependent on our parents, we cannot lead our own lives according to our own views of right and wrong. The trouble is that if our parents give us more freedom, we are bound to make mistakes, and they will wonder if they have given us too much freedom. On the other hand, if parents allow too little freedom, their teenage children are likely to become resentful and rebellious.
In conlusion, somewhere between the two extremes, it ought to be possible to find a sort of “democratic” alternative, which allows children the freedom to grow up and to make own decisions,including mistakes, but which also offers them help and protection when they need it.