Parent or friend?
Moral development is important for children between the ages of 6 and 10 years because these are formative.
Children begin to appreciate rules and boundaries and are likely to co-operate especially when they know there are real consequences and not mere threats.
Known as the school-agers, they also have their own peculiarities. Empathy, co-operation and responsibility are virtues that they can fully comprehend at this age.
Children of this age should therefore be a significant part of events - whether at home, school or church.
They should be occupied with age-appropriate tasks and chores.
Sensitive parents and their children begin to mostly form loving bonds of affection and esteem.
As parents and care-givers continue to fulfil such emotional roles alongside functional roles, they must understand the dynamics of their interactions.
Emotional roles
Emotional roles refer to the ways in which adults interact with children and influence their emotional well-being and meet their psychological needs.
This includes providing comfort, support and care to make them feel secure and loved.
Helping them recognise and regulate their own emotions, and demonstrating resilience and empathy are all ways by which parents help to shape their emotional development.
Functional roles refer to the practical and tangible responsibilities and tasks that adults perform to support the physical, cognitive and social development of the child.
Teaching skills to help children face life, offering counsel and directions, providing physical needs, offering safety and teaching values are some of the ways by which parents perform their functional roles.
Whilst performing these roles, it is easy for some parents to end up on the slippery path of overemphasising one role at the expense of the other.
For instance, some parents become so floored by the seeming intellect of the child that they begin to make the mistake of discussing personal issues (about their relationship with other adults) with them.
This is very common in homes where there is conflict or divorce.
Children who are not morally, emotionally and intellectually fit to listen, let alone handle such delicate and weighty matters now become confidantes of hurting adults.
The motive for doing this may vary but this affects the child in many ways including building resentment and hatred that are unhealthy.
Hard truth
The hard truth that parents must learn later is that as children traverse this age and grow older, their parental roles change to become more functional than emotional.
This means that their role is to mainly help the child navigate life by offering disciplinary measures and boundaries that will help them make meaning of life later.
This cannot be overshadowed by the desire to form emotional bonds and friendship.
Interestingly, some parents and caregivers do not get this.
They desire to continue having the pre-teen and teenager as their best friend.
The result is that they are pushed into a corner where they are compelled to cave in to the whims and caprices of the child in order to sustain this friendship.
This seemingly harmless game becomes manipulative on the blind side of the adults involved.
Children are likely to take advantage of their parent’s permissiveness to push for their wants and independence much to their detriment.
In order to make this friendship work, such adults deceive themselves by thinking they must not offend their ‘friend’.
They find themselves in situations where they unconsciously pacify the child when they are unable to meet expectations.
Where they have to be firm and stern, they walk on egg shells.
This is a dangerous path to tread on.
Parents must understand the importance of these roles at every stage.
There must be a balance between emotional and functional roles before the age of 10 years.
In later years, the functional roles must dominate and parents must strive to be parents and not friends.
The writer is a Child development expert/Fellow of the Zero-To-Three Academy, USA.
E-mail: nanaesi.gaisie@wellchildhaven.com
