UNAIR NEWS – Recently, issue on LGBT has been popular. The negative effects of the Internet such as pornography also can be accessed easily.

Children as the future generations must be protected from those issues. Parents and teachers should have special fundamental formula. Child psychology expert, Dr. Dewi Retno Suminar M.Si said that early mentality reinforcement is the key to fortify children from the bad excess of era advancement.

Vice Dean III of UNAIR Faculty of Psychology said that in the past, parents only thought of how to get clothes, shelter and food but now, those are relatively manageable. Thus, we need to pay attention on mentality reinforcement.

She explained that mentality is the psychological condition of an individual to perceive its surrounding or experience. A kid with good mentality will face the problem in the right way. Strong mentality will be able to filter outer influences. Bad influences should be able to be rejected.

How do we reinforce children mentality? First, teach them discipline and explain the reasons for example on getting up early, they should also understand why they should discipline themselves on that. “Their reasoning is established. Logic is used so they can think of cause and effect, good and bad,” she said.

Second, train the children to problem solving oriented act for example when their vehicles broken, parents do not immediately fix them but give them hints to arouse their thinking. “Ask them what we should do if our vehicle is broken, let them use their reasoning to solve the problem,” Dewi said.

By training them discipline and problem solving, children’s mentality will be strong. That strength will help them in their growth process especially in solving surrounding problems and fortifying them from negative influences. (*)

Author: Rio F. Rachman