Some People Say Parents Have The Most Significant Influence In A Child’s Development

Some people say that parents have the most significant influence in a child’s development. However, others say that things like television or friends have the most important influence on them. Discuss both views and give your opinion.

Here is a band 9 essay on this topic. Need help with writing? Get your writing samples corrected by me. 

Band 9 IELTS essay sample

According to some people, parents are the most influential people in a child’s life; others insist that friends and gadgets like television have a greater impact on them. In my opinion, parents are certainly important in a child’s life but now friends and media are becoming even more influential.

Parents are important. After all, they are the first teacher and the role model of a child. Children learn much of the social skills from their parents. In fact, the atmosphere at home plays a crucial role in shaping their character and personality. That also explains why kids born to successful parents also become successful in their life. Likewise, kids coming from dysfunctional families are more likely to have personality problems.

Even so, in this age of information explosion parents are becoming less influential. To start with, most parents are now busy and get to spend only a small amount of time with their children. Now, the television has assumed the role of the baby sitter. Children spend enormous amounts of time in front of the TV and get influenced by the programmes on it. Consequently, their understanding of the world is now shaped more by the programmes they watch on television than by their parents.

Friends are even more influential than gadgets. Children spend a great deal of time with their peers at school and outside of it. It is quite natural for them to get influenced by their friends. Every child wants to be popular among their friends. Actually, many children are willing to even disobey their parents to impress their friends.

To conclude, parents are slowing losing their influence on children because they do not manage to spend adequate time with them. Not surprisingly, friends and gadgets are replacing parents as the greatest influence on children.

Manjusha Nambiar

Hi, I'm Manjusha. This is my blog where I give IELTS preparation tips.

2 Responses

  1. pkchan says:

    It is very common that children get influenced by parents along with some social elements. In this aspect, few argue that friend or television has a dominant role to play than the parents in their development. Even though this argument cannot be ruled out completely, in my opinion parents have upper hand in child’s growth.
    Children spend most of the time with parents, when they are young. They try to follow the parent’s mannerisms and habits. For example, the child grows up as vegetarian, if both the parents do not eat any kind of meat. The psychological studies support that the children subconsciously listen to the discussions between parents. Because of that, parents act very cautious in front of the little ones and try to create a positive learning atmosphere. And also it is well proven that lack of proper parental care led children to involve in unwanted social activities, like crime or drug usage.
    On the other side, watching television is one of the frequent activity among the children. Though it has some good from programs related to science and technology, environment or global news, there is equally or more negative impact from some evil reality shows and fancy advertisements. Even here, parents are key to monitor, what they are watching and how they are adopting. Friends are another significant social elements. Kids bring all the rubbish to home by learning from their friends. When in school, they spend lot of time together, and the bad get easily transferred between than good. Here too parents should be watchful on their loved ones.
    To conclude, undoubtedly parents have most significant role to play in bringing up a child. Though there is some good that can be gained from friendship or television, the negative influence is more outweighed.

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