Factors Affecting development: Parenting, Role Models, peer Groups and Interactions

A. Parenting
Parenting includes everything that one is going out of one’s way to assist, help, listen,
and do something for a child. Parenting is learned from how individuals are parented. Cobb
(2001) stresses that parenting is more a matter of who one is passed on from one generation
to the next. Diana Baumrind has distinguished four styles of parenting in terms of
differences in parental responsiveness (refers to how sensitive, supportive the parents are.)
and demandingness (parents hold high expectations for their children’s behavior and
supervising their activities).

Parenting style
1. Authoritative parenting is a style that stresses self-reliance and independence. Parents
maintain open communication lines with children and give reasons when instating
discipline.
2. Authoritarian parenting that stresses obedience, respect for authority and traditional
values.
3. Indulgent parenting characterized by show of affection, love, warmth and nurturance
but with little supervision.
4. Neglectful parenting characterized by little warmth, nurturing and supervision.

B. Role Model

Parents are normally served as role models for their children. It may provide both sons’
and daughters perceptions of men and women. Studies show that for as there is alternative child
care, maternal employment does not usually have bad effects on children. Peers are also influence
acquisition of knowledge behaviors. By serving as role models, children
are able to follow their actions and behave like them. What peers do are copied and followed by
those who observe them. As children age, they tend to reinforce peer’s behaviors. To reinforce is
to pay attention to another’s behavior either to praise or criticize it or to share in it. Peer influence
can be both harmful and beneficial.

C. Peer Group and Interactions

Peer interaction provides opportunity for specific instruction and learning. This is
clearly see in school games and sports competition where peers can teach each other and learn
and acquire new skills together. Peer interaction also serves as a good venue for developing
personal and group relationships including the sense of belonging. The peer Group has always been
a source of affection, sympathy, and understanding. It is also served as setting for the achievement
of independence from parents.

Teen friendships are more intimate because they can share each other’s feelings and secrets.
Teens also prefer friendship that goes for the same interests in sports, music, dance and so on.
They are able to maintain their friendships through activities which contribute to a stable
friendship in adolescence.