Leadership Starts with what a child sees at home

Leadership starts with what a child sees at home

Every time that I read in the papers or watch in television a mother or father murdering their own child, pains my heart to the deepest levels of despair.

How can anyone hurt a child? How can anyone dare insult Nature, God, and the architect of the universe, whatever your belief system is?

A child is the future of a country. A child is the hopes and aspirations that a society must have in order to succeed.

Watching the news about this woman that killed her own two months old baby was extremely painful for me and I am sure for most of our society.

How could she do such a thing? Yes, it could be a severe case of mental illness, I don’t know the details of the case, but still, and it is a despicable act.

There are thousands of families that can’t have children that would have loved to adopt that child. Why not give it up in adoption so as to give that child a chance in the world?

Why destroy a beautiful, innocent, life?

Let me give you another situation, opposite of the lady that killed her child.

My grandson Orlando Joaquin, also known as Orly, was very happy and looking forward to the opportunity to play Hopscotch after school, with a three year old kid that he wanted to be friends with. My grandson is only 27 months old.

My daughter took him to play with the little kid and for no reason; the kid ran away, he simply didn’t want to play with him. Orly was devastated. He started crying and felt very sad, and asked my daughter why the little boy didn’t want to play with him.

My daughter tried the best she could to tell him that the boy was probably sad or was hurting, that he had a good reason not to want to play, not to be sad, etc.

She then calls my son in law, a prominent attorney in a very busy law firm to tell him what had happened with the kid not wanting to play with Orly. What did Orlando, my son in law do?

He cancelled his appointments for the afternoon, went to a store, bought a Hopscotch game and went home to play with his son all afternoon.

Can you imagine the love that this father has for his son that he is willing to take time off his busy schedule in order to repair whatever harm a three year old did to his son by not wanting to play with him? I couldn’t have asked for a better son in law.

I was flabbergasted when my daughter told me just yesterday and it inspired me to write this column

Don’t you think that with that kind of example Orlando Joaquin will turn out to be a good son, a better father, even a leader in his community? Odds are not 100% but they are definitely high that he will turn out to be a good citizen, maybe even a leader in his school, college and in society.

A child that is raised with love and understanding will have a better chance to be an asset for any community, country or even the world.

A child that is raised with constant abuse, who sees his or her parents consume drugs, fight, scream at each other, will construct a crooked image of what life really is and will behave in ways that will often lead to crime and incarceration.

There are thousands, millions if we take the whole world, of families that forget that the most important part of their lives is their loved ones, their relationships.

The fact that we have evolved as group living animals and continue to do so today means that at a deep and unconscious level, people need social companionship, social feedback and social interaction. People are naturally programmed to seek the company of others. It also suggests that people will find social isolation quite stressful and the prospects of being shunned, rejected, and isolated are quite threatening.

In fact there are countless psychological studies that support the fact that people need to interact in healthy ways in order to lead happy lives.

How can children that are mistreated or witness negative behavior in their parents be expected to interact in healthy ways?

Harlow conducted social isolation studies with baby rhesus monkeys and the research was so painful as to make it unthinkable to replicate it with human infants. Data on attachment theory demonstrates that infants find separation from their primary caretakers to be deeply traumatizing. For a child to be separated from his or her caretakers is like being exposed to radiation: Any amount is harmful and it accumulates.

How many parents don’t see their children for days, weeks, months even years. How many when they get home their children are already sleeping and when they wake up the child is already off to school?

Human beings are naturally social animals and even though there are social differences such as extroverts that are powerfully motivated by the social contact and people that prefer to remain mostly by themselves (introverts), all respond to love and affection.

It is very important to understand, and I hope that parents reading this article will agree, that children in their early years of development are primarily concerned about adapting to the demands of their parents. The degree to which the parents provide an appropriate degree of warmth and affection and set appropriate limits for a child’s behavior, will affect two broad aspects of personality: core self esteem and attitudes toward authority.

Core self esteem impacts a person’s ability to deal with adversity, whereas attitudes toward authority influence a person’s self control and willingness to follow rules.

This why it is so important for parents consciously make an effort to dedicate time and effort to the development of their children.

I have been invited to speak in many schools in the island and I find great examples of youngsters that have been raised by responsible parents and are very clear of the problems of our society and their responsibility to do something about them.

We must pay attention and even train families on how to be better parents and raise their children to be productive citizens, even to become leaders.