The Parents

Throughout my time at The Red Shield I found my biggest adjustment to be dealing with the parents. Regardless of why I was there, I had to interact with the parents because I was interacting directly with their children. For the most part all the parents were pleasant, and they were always nice to me; however sometimes it would bother me how the parents either spoke or treated their children. I felt like they didn't foster a nurturing environment for the children and all of the bad habits that the adults had directly and severely rubbed off on the children. Alot of the disciplinary problems that Mike and I had to deal with was because the children either were imitating their parent(s), rebelling toward all adults because of their parents, or their parents didn't properly teach them how to conduct themselves in school and in public. They didn't grow up in a household that amplified respect so they didn't know how to show respect. It was disheartening but I couldn't pass judgement because these were children that had to grow up FAST and been faced with things that even some adults didn't have to face. These children were use to either helping raise themselves or COMPLETELY raising themselves. So with this in mind I worked my hardest while I was there to provide an example for the children so that I could teach them that even though you didn't grow up in the most ideal circumstances you could still grow up to be exceptional! :)