by Zelna Lauwrens, founder of Equal Zeal Training, an organisation that specialises in self development programmes for young people and their families.  For more information visit Equal Zeal .

Your child is born amidst teddies, new clothes, bouquets of flowers and many visits from excited family and friends…when the hustle and bustle dies down and your happy family returns home from hospital, you are left hoping, praying, and wishing that this child will be an easy one.  That your child will cruise through the journey of life without a hitch or a problem.  That your child will be different from all the ones that you hear about in the media that make bad choices or are exposed to negative circumstances.  That your child will be the one where homework is always done, suitable friends are chosen, manners are good and model behaviour is displayed.

As baby grows steadily and the developmental stages are ticked off one by one, you shower the little soul with so much love and affection that there is no doubt that they will grow up into anything other than your special and gifted child with so much good to offer the world.  Then school starts, and so the uphill battle of homework, bullying, pressures of tests, strict teachers and reduced playtime steps in.  Your once precious little soul that adored being with mommy and daddy and loved hugs, kisses and piggy back rides now pulls a face at the thought of mom dropping them off at the classroom door.  Fights and arguments are reduced to having the latest gadgets and toys and which clothing labels are the best to wear alongside why fast food is way better than vegetables.

Before you know it, your once adorable 6-year old with two front teeth missing turns into a revolting teenager adorned in black clothing and enough piercings to resemble a Christmas tree. Your beautiful daughter insists on wearing skimpy, provocative clothing that relays the message that she is no longer a child.  The cheekiness and sullen behaviour steps in and nothing you do is good enough and so the endless cycle of habitual arguing in the household begins.

So what are we debating here? Are the swift changes in technology to blame for a value shift and decline in positive behaviour in our children, or is it the lack of distinct traditional parenting, perhaps we need to look to the media to find a scape goat, or is it the overwhelming toxic influence of alchohol, sex and drugs that are impacting on our children’s precious lives along with not enough exercise, poor diet, role models in the form of singers and scandalous movie stars and crime statistics on the upswing?

We can point fingers, we can allocate blame, we can raise our hands in the air in frustration, but as parents we need to realise that it is reasonable to assume that a generation shaped by this new fast paced world of ours will be different from those who have gone before it.

Albert Einstein said that “Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.” Let us acknowledge that times are changing and that we need to move with the times rather than stay stuck in the rigid confines of parenting with blinkers on that can sometimes exacerbate problems in our children.