Parents at Home Mould Future for Children
[ Samuel Niyitunga ]
You probably have heard for days or years ago that actions speak louder than words, but yet you might have not seen how this applies to the real life. Reading this feature will help you understand more the concept.
Identification, in its psychological concept, means a process by which a person, particularly a child, allocates to himself/herself the characteristics or qualities of another person. It refers to a process that leads the child to think, to feel, and to behave as if the characteristics of another person usually a parent in the case of a young child belong to him or her.
Rubin and McNeil (1981) said that identification can be referred to as modelling. However, the two concepts are different in the sense that identification is used by psychoanalytic theorists, while modelling is used by social learning theorists.
Other studies have shown that modelling is a tool used to explore identification, that children may choose one model over another because of identification. From this perspective, identification is a process in which a child imitates a model because the model is a person the child wants to be like.
If we can take an example of a little boy who faces two persons that could serve as models to him, at home, the boy may take his father, who is a policeman, as a model, when at school, he is with the teacher, who could also be his model. The child may decide to take his father as his model because he wants to be like a policeman rather than being like a teacher.
DiRenzo (1990) said that the identification process is an important mechanism by which the child internalises norms and notions of right and wrong because responses acquired by identification seem to be emitted spontaneously, without any specific training or direct rewards for imitation.
There is a Kirundi saying which states that “Impfizi y’intama itendera nka se” which literally means “a young boy behaves in his father’s like”. Since the parent serves as a model to the child, this will tend to facilitate the identification process. The child will absorb some of his/her parent’s motives, values, and other attributes.
In supporting this point with regard to the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, experience shows that children who are more exposed to sexually explicit materials such as movies and other programmes are likely to imitate what they have been viewing in the movie or programme.
The same applies to men, who arrive home drunk, don’t care whether children are asleep already or not, and jump onto their wives and start enjoying.
Such parents should bear in mind that children use observational devices of learning and acquiring certain attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour that parents view as undesirable and do not want them to learn. They should therefore be very careful not to make any controversy between what they preach to the children and the way they behave, because their deeds will have greater influence on their children than their words.
Once children take notice of what is happening in the other corner of the house, they will be likely to imitate their parents.
Parents may tell their children to obey God by praying every day and participating in benevolent actions such as helping people. But if parents themselves do not pray, and are not engaged in such charitable actions to assist miserable people, the children will, through observation, find out that the parents have no commitment in praying and helping others, and will behave accordingly.
The same is the case in issues related to sexuality. It will not be easy for such misbehaving parents to prohibit their children from sexual abuse and fear the HIV/AIDS epidemic, while they are bad models to the children. Children will try their best until they find out the reality behind sex.
But if parents prove by actions that they behave in a non sexual way, children will take this as a model, and it will have a greater influence in developing obedience to parents’ advices, because identification helps children to define their lives by viewing themselves as being like their parents.
A Swahili adage says: “mtoto umleavyo ndivyo akuavyo”, literally translated as “the way a child is nursed, the way it grows up”. As an advice for you, parents, the future of your children is a result of what you want them to be. Remember that HIV/AIDS is at the main threshold of your houses and educate your children accordingly.