Parental Influence

Parents have a great influence over their children. They need to teach them that fighting is not the answer and that families, real families, help each other by supporting one another. Families help each other in ways that don’t harm others or cause people pain. Children need to know that there are others places they can go if they don’t have stable homes, they do not need to get involved with gangs. There are after school activities they can join to meet new people, they can volunteer at the local libraries, or just play pickup games at the local basketball courts. Children can find so many things to do and so many places to go where people are willing to help them and be there for them. They don’t need gangs to replace the void they feel from their lack of families. I know that local YMCA’s have activities for children to do after school that helps them stay off the streets and get involved. They have sports activities, volunteer opportunities, and there are field trips to go on. Even if children don’t have parents that are there for them, there are adults out there that would be willing to be there for children and places like the YMCA have those adults.
In the survey my group took for this project, one of the questions was do you know how use a gun? The answer out of 100 people was that 35% of them knew how to use a gun. Are the parents teaching children how to use a gun? If the parents are, why are they teaching their children ways to protect themselves using violence? Guns are extremely dangerous; recently so many young children have died due to accidental, self inflicted, gunshot wounds. Parents need to teach their children other ways of dealing with anger, and they need to teach them that killing is wrong. If parents put out a strong message against violence, children will listen.