Outside influences aren’t something we can avoid, neither are they always easy to adjust to, but the reality is that those outside influences will always have an impact on our children, which makes it difficult for us.
Social development is something that affects us all as soon as we’re old enough to understand and communicate. It involves learning the values, skills and knowledge that help us relate to other people so that we can contribute in positive ways to those we come in to contact with, including extended family, school and through the community.
Learning also becomes extended indirectly through social relationships including friends and extended family. It is through those relationships and awareness of expectations and social values that our children begin to build a sense of who they are.
It is inevitable that as children develop socially, they will continue to respond to those outside influences. It is those influences that take an active part in shaping their relationships and their lives.
Unfortunately, if those influences have too great a negative impact, our relationship with our children may begin to struggle, as we try to continue to build our own relationship with them, based on those negative influences.
Perhaps that’s why sometimes we find ourselves having to mediate more and why sometimes that can prove difficult.
My daughters are at an age where they worry too much about what other kids in school are doing and want to be able to do the same as them. I keep reminding them not to care about what others are doing or what they think about them.
I don't want them to make the same mistakes I did when I was growing up. I felt like I wasn't myself because I was busy being someone my friends wanted me to be, or I was worried about what people might think.
I think I have come a long way, but occasionally I do have those moments of self doubt brought on by outside influences.
Thanks Maria. From memory, as a child I was aware of many outside influences but because I was an insular child, I'm not sure how much I was by affected by them.
Unfortunately my family were my main influences, but I know everything you have written here did go on in the environment and in the way you describe, I just wasn't a part of it.
We are all exposed to outside influences,some positive, some negative. This didn't happen to me so much as a child, but it certainly happened to my children.
Unfortunately I didn't recognise it until the influences began to show and years later we are still having to deal with its consequences. I am very angry that it happened at all and also angry with myself that i didn't see it when it was happening so that I could have put a stop to it.
All we can do now is to try and repair the damage and hopefully move forward. This is a little easier now my children are older and some of the 'offenders' are no longer around to exert their influence.
Unfortunately it's only when we look back that we see the patterns unfold.
When I look back on my own life and my life mirrors this blog, I know there was nothing I could do to change my own circumstances. Looking back I would have had to change my family to do that. I believe we are protected because we don't understand.
If I was to come to understand my life earlier with all of the wrong family influences, I would have come to struggle more,because I would have been more stressed.
As they say ignorance is bliss. I coped because I didn't understand fully the extent of my life. We are protected by our own ignorance. To look back just adds to our frustration, sometimes we just have to let it go.