The young are extra imitators no matter what- they love to imitate almost everything they see from adults around them without thinking for in their innocence everything adults do are worth imitating.
In the cultural setting, conflict often arise between parents and teachers due to certain acts of behaviour of the young which parents take it as an intrusion to their home life. Teachers as the brokers for change need to make parents understand the dimensions of their influence to the character formation of the young.
There are certain traditional socio-cultural elements that need to be discussed with them especially when it comes to physical and verbal abuse. There are parents who take hold to physical abuse even at a slight error of a young without the benefit of the young to explain his side.
In retaliation that young goes out the home to inflict harm to others younger than him. There are parents who use foul language when angry leaving behind a print in the mind of the young that foul language is a normal way top express anger.
There are those who simply shrug shoulders making the young think they are unwanted. As the young grow older, the same parents complain why their sons and daughters act the way they do hurting them forgetting how they showed the examples. The young are simply shadows of all adult language and actions. No adult needs to suffer verbal abuses from the young if they never experienced such years ago.
Many issues against old parents are neglected and even hurt by their children leading to a passage of a law to protect elders and parents but can we adults pose a second to ask ourselves? Who were our shadows years ago watching us day by day? The young who bring along to school their individuality helplessly bring out their “absorbed shadows” from the home and the community for teachers to manage.
Teachers for their part stick on the policies laid down to them to avoid being put into investigation against child abuse, etc. Now taking this into the picture, the family is the basic unit of society wherein parents are the first teachers that means the young start building shadows from the home.
By Mary Anne T. Pasado