Wrong Crowd

Yaot na kaiban. The wrong kind of people. This could come up inside one’s mind and it may sound prejudicial. But based on keen observation, a person could infer and take educational cues that the values of the person he is connecting with is the wrong kind. This entails the development of character traits not attuned to what their parents are expecting. Parental intervention on the affiliations of their kids must be of importance. You see, the efforts to straighten a child’s character could be bent by outside forces. These might be the people whom the child affiliate with.

Lumenlearning.com mentions that Individual behavior and decision making can be influenced by the presence of others. There are both positive and negative implications of group influence on individual behavior. For example, group influence can often be useful in the context of work settings, team sports, and political activism. However, the influence of groups on the individual can also generate negative behaviors.

Psychologists say that Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome.

Meaning, the people whom the child link with have great influences on what he/she thinks and these will be the foundation of character. It has always been a mistake of parents on NOT monitoring the people whom the kid is joining and befriending. They think that they know their kids well but they do not focus on the outside forces hounding on the children.

Here are some thoughts to ponder: The people we choose to spend our time with, as well as the ones we have no choice but to see, can have a tremendous impact on us. You can begin to internalize other people’s voices, as you start to believe the horrible things they say. You can probably think of at least one person in your life who always leaves you wishing that you hadn’t met up with them. Sometimes the best thing to do about them is to remove them from your life (Mendoza, 2018).

That is the point. We could not stop respecting but we could disallow others to manipulate our thought-patterns and values which might be inconsistent to the universal values and the ones our parents are holding on. Yes, families, like organizations, must adhere to their mission statements, their vision and CORE VALUES. The lives of the people in our families could be affected greatly without such.

It is a messianic thought to have positive psychological environments since we could not control the orientations and experiences of others which cascade to their children. But we have our areas of responsibility whom we have a sense of control.

We can stop giving negative people too much power in our life. We must guard our time. Negative people can monopolize your time - even when they're not with you - if you're not careful. We need to choose our attitude. Spending time with negative people can be the fastest way to ruin a good mood. Refocus your thoughts.

But these things could not be understood by children if we do not guide them well. Out there, some people are sick, self-righteous and self-centered. They may look kind but they just want something out from your kids- a filler of their deficits, a distraction, someone to bully, someone to apply their “power”, an object to be possessed or someone to fill in a blank…

We allow our kids to those friends who could nurture. Those companions who will not spoil but empower. We expose our kids to friends whose values are consistent to our family values…

This is not prejudice but common sense.

In her bestselling book “positive Discipline”, Jane Nelsen, Ed.D. says: When children (and adults) develop more social interest (concern for others, their community, and their environment) and learn methods and problem-solving skills to act on their own concern, we will have peace in the world.

In a micro scale, we could continue dealing with the young through positive guidance and eventually become a contributor of goodness in a macro level.