Wednesday, 14 September 2016

Basic Notes Concerning Latchkey Children

By Karen Martin


Latchkey kids refer to those kids who are between five and thirteen years and they mostly take care of themselves after the daily school routine without any adult supervision. This is because the parents of these kids are either away at work or this child is left alone at home with very limited parental supervision. Latchkey children are usually exposed to various challenges as compared to children who receive close supervision from their parents.

It has been viewed that most children coming from single parenthood families and those low income earning families usually spend a lot of time alone in their homes as compared to those children whose families earn higher incomes. Specialist have noticed that unsupervised time usually makes kids independent and mostly leads to challenges together with negative outcomes.

The early teens are usually vulnerable to some kind of peer pressure which creates incorrect behaviors among these individuals like smoking, alcohol abuse, illegal drugs and sexual promiscuity. These are the type of behaviors which basically have a tendency to stem up unused energy, pressure of misbehaving together with a kind of hostility which is as a result of improper attention from their parents.

Pupils whom after school go unsupervised are associated with a higher rate of trying to use addictive drugs as when compared to these students who are supervised after school. Research has actually suggested that peer pressure which usually leads to high drug use is higher when pupils are in some of public places such as malls rather than when they are in their homes.

In a research carried out, middle school students who were left alone at homes for more than three hours in a day yielded greater levels of behavioral problems, increased levels of depression and very minimal levels of self-esteem when compared to other students. Kids who originated from lower families are usually associated with huge externalizing concerns like hyperactivity and conduct disorders without forgetting problems with their academic lives.

Sexual expose among these individuals is also seen as very huge threat to the future lives. Research has also suggested that the rate of influence of these children was huge since they wander freely without any supervision. This kind of influence exposes them to delinquent activities like stealing and vandalism.

This is because these are kids who usually wander freely after they are done with their daily schooling routine. This is because there is a main difference between children who get close monitoring of their behaviors especially when they are out of school. It has been viewed that those kids who wander freely without their parents knowing what their children are doing end up being fed up with a lot of wrong information.

The kind of environment they are exposed to ignores the adult standards and leads these kids to kind of peer pressure which tends to go along with them. Mostly the parents of these kids call them when there is an emergency.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment