Is child behaviour better or worse than it was years ago?

            Nowadays, parents feel worried about their children's behaviour that is really need a great concern. It indicates that child behaviour is worse than many years ago. I argue those problems are happened because of some factors that I will explain in this essay.

            Factors that influence child behaviour are divided into 3 aspects; they are family especially mother, environment especially friends and also sophisticated technology. Family, including parents, is the closest people who the first interact with the child. They have the most important role for their children, because they understand well their child's behaviour than others. They are the one who really knows the weaknesses and the excesses their children have. Social Learning Theory suggests that a child learns behaviour from interaction with significant people in their environment, particularly parents and these behaviours are maintained through modelling and reinforcement. I have found that children with full of family’s love and with stay-at-home mother have better behaviour they do not have. Love from the family gives them comfortable feeling and children will get full care and affection from their mother directly that cannot be replaced by babysitter or any member of family. But nowadays, children do not get those kinds of things. They just get money without having any time to be spent with their parents. It causes many deviations of child behaviour as the children’s intimidation.

            Environment especially friends also influence child's behaviour because they are who spend long time to play with after they are far from their family. A child’s social interactions with persons his or her own age is a highly significant socialization factor (Handel, 1988). Children behaviour will be better when they have good friends. But when their friends give them bad influence, they will be difficult to refuse it, because the most children are impressionable. They still do not have any strong principle to differentiate what positive or negative is. In my village, children have smoked even if they are still underage. That a phenomenon supports that child's behaviour is worse nowadays. Their parents do not realize about that problem because their children smoke stealthily.

            Sophisticated technology gives children positive and negative impacts. It can improve and increase children intelligence because sophisticated technology supports their knowledge and their education also. In the other hand, it changes children behaviour and attitude. Children can surf on internet easily by their sophisticated gadgets and most of them tend to imitate what they see in the internet, such as free sex and violence. In addition, nowadays children treat people, older or younger, as friends. They do not understand enough how to regard or respect older people and what polite behaviour is. In the past, parents hold polite values solidly then teach their children for having good attitude. But I cannot find those kinds of things at this time.

            In conclusion, knowing the three aspects that can influence child's behaviour, we should realize that those three aspects are important as the consideration to have the better children's behaviour. In this case, parent’s role is needed. They are the only one who can be observer, controller and adviser for their children’s behaviour.