The Influence of Their Peers

The world is a wicked place with terrible influences all around us. We are bombarded with all things sexual, violent, crass, and downright evil.  Abortion is legal and rampant, religious liberties are restricted by our nation’s leaders, and traditional marriage is constantly under attack.  There is no denying that the world is full of horrific things, this is fact.  Why then, in this day and age, do we think that it is Less important, not More, that a mother spend More time working a job and Less raising her children?

   

One question that we need to ask ourselves is, who and what do we want influencing our children?  Do I want to be the one who determines what they learn, see, or hear, or do I want to leave that up to another adult, and primarily a bunch of other children? For that is something that we very often forget, when our children spend all of their time in day-care and school rather than in the home, their primary source of influence is their peers.  We can research what are and pay for the best schools with wonderful teachers, but they are still going to be surrounded with all sorts of other kids, who may, or very likely may not, be the type of children that you want your child associating with.  I am not saying that children should not play with other children, by all means they should do so, it is just best if it is done in a home where you can monitor behavior.  A very wise friend of mine recently said to me, you cannot change how other children are raised, but you can teach them the appropriate way to behave in your home.

No one loves my children more than their father and I do.  No matter how good, kind, or Christianly the person taking care of my kids is, they will never love them as much as I do. It therefore follows that I, more than anyone else, am looking out for my child’s best interests.  I don’t mean always making certain that they get their turn playing with that toy or that no one picks on them, but rather, teaching them how to behave.  Sometimes, this may mean that they do get picked on or don’t get a turn with the toy.  It is then my job to teach my children how to behave properly in the given situations.  When I see a group of boys that my son is playing with picking on someone, I can then teach him that it is his job to defend others and not to give in to peer pressure.  That is what it means to look out for his best interests.  A teacher or day-care worker, would see a situation and stop the bullying, I might see a situation, stop the bullying, and then instruct my child in how to not let something happen again, I teach them how to be a better human being.  This sort of thing takes a lot of time and effort.  It is not the day-care worker or the teachers job to raise the children, they just do crowd control.

It is not that we should stay home with our children out of a fear of the world around us.  But rather we should do so, so as to best prepare them to face the world themselves.  We all know that at the age of five or six, our children are not grown up, they are just beginning to be formed.   No matter how good of a job you are doing at home, if your child is outside of the home 80% of the time, then that outside influence is going to compete with and trump most of what you are striving to teach your kids.  

NB: I do recognize that the world also holds many beautiful and wonderful things for our children to discover.  I am only saying that we need to protect them from/prepare them to face the bad so that they may more fully enjoy the good.