The general belief regarding identity of teens or adolescents tends to portray them as the sole agents involved in their identity development. We all think that the way in which a grown-up boy or girl behaves is completely his or her own affair, and parents have nothing to do in that, as he or she is no more a kid. But it is not true. What parents teaches the child in his childhood becomes an integral part of his life. Childhood is the formative period of a person’s life. The habits developed at this time cast a shadow throughout the life. Hence, the identity of teenagers or adolescents is just the reflection of their parental nurture in their childhood.

A new study on adolescence reveals that parents are concerned, involved, and reflective participants in their children’s identity formation. Researchers of Bar Ilan University and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, studying parents and adolescents have documented that parents play very active role in the identity of adolescents.  According to the researchers parents invest a great amount of time and effort in their children’s identity, even fashioning their own lives with their children’s future identities in mind.

Hence, you have to act as influential socializing agents. You have to inculcate our age-old great values within your children. You have to install the noble virtues or the great standards which govern your children’s behaviour, choices and ideologies. Only noble virtues can play dominant role in moulding their attitude and approaches. Therefore you have to teach your children the guiding forces of life- discipline, right conduct, honesty, righteousness, patience, benevolence etc. And the only way your children will submit to this sort, when you also aspire to be the ideal, because children imitate parents.

For most of the adolescents, the Indian values are outdated and have no relevance. They are the mad followers of the western culture. Hence, you have to take a more conscious, positive, active and careful role in the identity formation of your children. You must make them aware about the untold sorrow, sufferings and frustration that the artificial and materialistic culture of the west brings, spoiling the family life and making men, simply beasts.