Parents of deviant youths need help

Some are involved in nefarious activities while others are engaged in bullying at school. The home environment is not conducive to the proper upbringing of these troubled youths.

There are three types of environments that contribute significantly to deviant behaviour by our young people: * An unstable home: This is when a child had a number of step-parents over a short period of time.

Moving from step-parent to step-parent can disrupt a child’s emotional growth and functioning.

* A single-parent home: A single parent can find it hard to maintain discipline in the home. The economic situation in most cases makes it difficult to take care of the needs of the child, resulting in the child being frustrated, angry and envious of what his or her peers have.

* Parents with a “gaza mentality”: These are parents who engage in fights in public places, pull weapons at individuals, “cuss-out” teachers and behave like bad-johns. Children growing up with such parents will pattern that same type of behaviour 99 percent of the time.

So the home environment needs to change for the sake of the children. There needs to be parenting courses available all over the country to help parents in raising children.

ANDRE ROBERTS via email