IMPACT OF PARENTS INTEREST ON CHILD INTEREST IN PAKISTAN

      IMPACT OF PARENTS INTEREST ON CHILD INTEREST

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Starting with the name of ALLAH the most beneficent and merciful who gave us the chance to contribute in the ocean of knowledge. We are also thankful to our teacher who guided us in every step that we took in our study.

This project would not have been possible without the guidance and constant encouragement of our teacher MAM SAMREEN IDREES. We would also like to thank our group member and the people who participated in our project without whom this effort could never have reached fruition.

INTRODUCTION:

The study of parent attitudes, belief systems and thinking has taken place along with changing conceptions of child-rearing that have emphasized the bidirectional nature of interactions, with children influencing parents as well as parents influencing children.

The attitudes most frequently considered have to do with the degree of warmth and acceptance or coldness and rejection that exists in the parent-child relationship, as well as the extent to which parents are permissive or restrictive in the limits they set for their offspring.

• EARLY COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT  OF CHILD

Parental involvement with children from an early age has been found to equate with better outcomes (particularly in terms of cognitive development). What parents do is more important than who they are for children’s early development – i.e. home learning activities undertaken by parents is more important for children’s intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income.

• LEARNING BY OBSERVATION

Learning through observation is also an important way of learning. Most children learn by observing their parents habits and attitudes. A case study tells that “Four years old JO watches her father tie his shoelaces and tries to copy his movements. JO is learning by observation.” This is also known as SOCIAL LEARNING though observation.

Verbally teaching a child right from wrong has far less of an impact than what she observes her parents and elders doing daily. A parent who frequently parties at night -- and occasionally misses work the next day -- undoes everything he verbally teaches his child about responsibility. If the child neglects to study for a test in favor of playing a computer game, and if she fails the test because of that decision -- and her partying parent punishes her for the lapse -- this can cause confusion in younger children and outright rebellion in teens. On the flip side, parents who rarely socialize and have a very narrow circle of friends can instill in their children a distrust of others, whether they intend to or not.

• SOCIO-CULTURE PERSPECTIVE:

The activity and the attitude of parents toward their children and the way children are reared has varied widely across history, across cultures in same era and even within the identical culture. Some parents swaddle their babies others don’t.

Some breast-feed other bottle feed and so on. In this regard it is interesting to compare infant-parent relationship within different culture.

In Soviet Union babies receive more physical contact hugging, kissing etc.

In United States and Europe children receive attention and care of their parents in the form of bed-time stories.

In Asian countries most parents are over protected and the children don’t get to be independent. 

• BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE:

Biological perspective gives the information about the genetic make-up and heredity of a child. The child adopts the inherited behavior of his parents. If the certain inherited traits are dominant then the child will show the same behavior. For example, if the father eats hap hazard, the son will also do this. A case study shows that “Tom inherited the trait of aggressiveness from his father.”

• PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIP:

Relationship of a child with his parents starts right after his birth. A child’s first institute is his mother’s lap. Child imitates his parents and responds the same in most of the cases. The closer the relationship with his parent, more likely are the chances for a child to follow his parents.

• HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE:

What constitutes normal or "good" behavior in children depends on the child's age, personality and physical and emotional development and his free will. It's unrealistic to expect children to behave in specific ways if they haven't reached certain maturity levels. If you know what to expect from your children at each stage of development, you will better understand if their behavior is appropriate and normal.

SIGNIFICANCE:

The significance of our study is that it will help us in near future in our practical life. This study also provided us the main parenting issues of today’s era. It also gives us the information about how the children of this age are being brought up and what are their problems that we need to focus on. Our study is also significant in a way that it will help us to raise good children in our future as parents because it helped us knowing that what things can affect the children positively and negatively.

LITERATURE REVIEW:

A large body of research on attitudes indicates that parental warmth in combination with reasonable levels of control or restrictiveness combine to produce positive child outcomes. Although not strong, the results are quite consistent.

Although many studies have addressed links between parents’ thoughts and actions, more and more investigation is being extended to the influence of parents’ thoughts on child behavior, with actions as the connecting link. Most of the work has been done with mothers, although increasingly research is being extended to fathers.

Researchers have also noted that what is seen to be a reasonable level of control varies as a function of socio cultural context. Thus attitudes toward control are generally more positive in lower socio-economic status contexts.

In 2007, around half of parents surveyed said that they felt very involved in their child’s school life. Two thirds of parents said that they would like to get more involved in their child’s school life.

IMPACT ON EATING HABITS:

Parents are one of the biggest influences on their child, and the child adopts their eating habits and those he sees practiced by the rest of the family whether they are good or bad. Meals Matter reports that the child looks to his parents to make decisions about a wide range of things, including how he eats. Learning more about how parents habits influence the child may help them make changes that improve their health, as well as the health of their child.

One of the most important ways a child learns is by watching parents. If the child sees his parents eating unhealthy foods, he is more likely to believe these eating habits are normal and acceptable.

If parents practice healthy eating habits, the child is more likely to reach for nutritious foods instead of junk. When the child watches his parents consistently making healthy food choices, he is more likely to adopt those habits himself. If a child watches his parents to reach for a piece of fruit or raw vegetables for a snack, it will not only teach him the importance of eating fruits and vegetables, but will also encourage him to make similar choices. He will include vegetables or fruits with every meal and opt for whole grains rather than white versions as additional ways.

IMPACT ON CLOTHINGS:

During the early age of a child parents dress their child up in the manner that they like. Eventually the child adopts those dressing habits which he has seen while growing up and dresses in the same way.

IMPACT ON EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT:

Research on emotional development of children has shown parents’ self support about emotion regulation pattern and coaching their children about emotions. Girls observe their mother expressing emotions more than fathers and adopt the same while the boys observing their fathers, not expressing emotions,

are compelled to do so. So, in any certain situation girls are more likely to behave as their mothers and boys are more likely to behave as fathers.

IMPACT ON EDUCATION:

Another research tried to explore the relationship between parents’ and child’s interests and found out that way parents teach their children in their early ages leaves a great impact on them. Parents’ interest and involvement in their children’s studies influences children’s interest. Most of the children adopts their parents’ interests in education and continue to study the subjects in which their parents were interested. Researches reveal that now-a-days many parents allow their children to do what they want. According to a case study “Dr. Akhtar has two daughters. His wife is a biology teacher and both the daughters are studying MEDICAL.” The daughters have always seen their parents talking about medical in their home and have also developed medical interest and also want to be doctors. So in the light of this, we can say that when children observe their parents in some particular profession they foresee their future as their parents and develop the same interest that their parents have.

METHODOLOGY:

SAMPLE:

We chose two samples for our survey.

We chose children of school as our sample. Their ages ranges from 13-15.

The other sample was the university students. They were of ages 19-22.

LOCALE:

The locale we chose was POF MODEL HIGH SCHOOL in WAH CANTT. The other locale was the WAH UNIVERSITY and WAH MEDICAL COLLEGE.

NUMBER OF PEOPLE:

The number of people who participated in our survey was about 100. There were 50 high school students and 50 university students.

RESULT ANALYSIS

RESULT AND DATA ANALYSIS

Group of students having age 13-16 show         

53.4% positive results

46.6% negative results

Group of students having age 17-22 show

53.5% positive result

46.5% negative result

This shows that parents do have an impact on their children in some cases. Children answered most of the questions in positive reply admitting that they do have similar choices, habits and interests as of their parents.

As one of the candidate, when asked about the topic said that children by their habits and choices depict their parents’ habits and choices
DISCUSSION

Our study shows that there is a great impact of parents’ attitude and interests on their children as the children learn from different paradigms. As discussed earlier children use behaviorism, humanistic, cognitive, biological approaches to learn.

We also learn that respecting the choices of children and learn to deny them in the most soothing way by convincing kids the fact why you deny them. Never consider children as miniature human beings with inferior minds or immature psychic realms. They are miniatures only in the physical form in the feelings level and in the emotional levels, they are intense enough same as elders.

The warmth of parental affection and interpersonal relationship with parents help kids to become mature enough and responsible enough to handle his own life as well that of his/her fellow beings. Regarding our result of survey it is obvious that most of the children think that parents have right to choose their future. They think that what their parents choose for them is best and do not argue rather accept their decisions “as it is” whether it is in their education or clothing or eating habits.

Authoritarian parenting styles can be very rigid and strict. Parents who practice authoritarian style parenting have a strict set of rules and expectations and require rigid obedience.

Permissive or Indulgent parenting is most popular in middle-class families. In these family settings a child's freedom and their autonomy are valued and parents tend to rely mostly on reasoning and explanation. There tends to be little if any punishment or rules in this style of parenting and children are said to be free from external constraints. Children of permissive parents are generally happy but sometimes show low levels of self-control and self-reliance because they lack structure at home.

Younger children are becoming more independent and are beginning to build friendships. They are able to reason and can make their own decisions given hypothetical situations. Young children demand constant attention, but will learn how to deal with boredom and be able to play independently. They also enjoy helping and feeling useful and able. Parents may assist their child by encouraging social interactions and modeling proper social behaviors. A large part of learning in the early years comes from being involved in activities and household duties.

Parents are expected to make decisions about their child's education. Parenting styles in this area diverge greatly at this stage with some parents becoming heavily involved in arranging organized activities and early learning programs. Other parents choose to let the child develop with few organized activities.

LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

LIMITATIONS:

Our sample was limited.

Due to shortage of time we couldn’t study it deeply.

There is a possibility that the students must have marked the options randomly.

This is also a possibility of courtesy biasness.

SUGGESTION:

Regarding our study:

Parents should guide their children in every matter.

Parents should not impose everything on their children.

Awareness should be provided to parents and children about parent-children relationship.

Parents should justify every decision, they make for their children.

Parents should try to express their emotions on right time, so that emotional learning of children would be appropriate.

Regarding our survey:

There were some confounding variables that affected the results of our survey.

Some people might be in hurry.

Some people did not want to share their personal information .So; they should be made comfortable to trust the researcher.

                                        CONCLUSION

Parents need to understand the amount of inspiration kids can get from the presence and love of parents. Parents should respect the feelings and choices of your kids. This will generate a mutual respect between children and parents. Better relationship with kids is necessary to interfere and influence in the grooming process of kids. When children feel affection towards parents, he/she may feel the obligation to follow the guidelines of parents