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PersonalAdvice

Parents or Peers

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Sigmund Freud, considered as the father of psychoanalysis has research works majorly based on the theory that parents are a major influence on children and they significantly contribute to the psychological attributes that children acquire as adults. But Judith Rich Harris (Harvard Graduate) is a psychology researcher and the author of “The Nurture Assumption”,  a book that criticised the belief that parents are the most important factor in a child’s development, and presented evidence which contradicts that belief.
This seems like a tricky question. Most of us think “Mummy-Papa for some things, friends and classmates for others.” And certainly for most issues in our lives, we would envision using this binary to our advantage: you would ask your best friend to advise you about that girl you like, but you would probably ask your mom who is a doctor for advice regarding medical school applications.
Source: www.parentscoalition.net
I don’t mean to imply that you should approach your parents for serious life decisions over peers, or that peers would be inherently more understanding about relationship issues or other matters in your private life. Each of us shares a unique relationship with every individual in our lives. Perhaps you share a very open relationship with your parents in which you can talk to them about anything under the sun, or perhaps your friends are very good at helping you make more important life decisions. That is hardly the point. The dilemma we face all the time is, who we should turn to in situations like these? And my answer to that is that: it depends.
Source: www.healthcommunities.com
Research says that at a very young age (0-8 years), parents are more influential than peers. As the children grow, parents feel that they’ve been replaced by friends, but It’s not that peers are more important than parents, but rather that peers become more important than they previously were.
Before you close this window, and grumble about the stupidity of the advice offered by this article, give me a minute. In his book, the Cause of Deliquency, Travis Hirschi argues that “forcing the child to choose between his peers and his parents is incredibly harmful”. Because each of us is positioned in a unique manner vis-a-vis the other individuals in our lives, no one size fits all solution applies here. But what does apply to everybody is one simple piece of advice: go with your gut. This is not limited to interacting with your parents, or peers. It applies to every relationship that you have in your life.
It is my firm belief that the person you must rely on the most is yourself. There is an anonymous quote I live by:“There will be haters, there will be doubters, there will be non-believers, and then there will be you proving them wrong.” YOU are the one person who you are stuck with for the rest of your life. Oh, definitely, there will be those times when it seems like after falling down, you will never be able to get up, or when times seem so rough that you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is right to seek help at those times (or whenever you feel like you need it). What is ultimately the most important, however, is to listen to yourself, and to honour what you need. Whatever it may be.

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Kunal Kanodia student at the Doon School, Dehra Dun and is currently pursuing the International Baccalaureate Diploma programme. His interests revolve around International Relations and love participating in Model United Nations Conferences, debating, writing, reading and just meeting different people!
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