Just as the environment in our home has important implications on our mental health, conditions in our neighborhood surrounding our home have major effects. Children, especially teens, are developing mentally and are more likely to be influenced by the conditions of neighborhood than adults. Teens walk the fine line between childhood and adulthood. Living in crime-infested neighborhoods can weaken the most strongly-embedded morals in a teen. Here parental involvement is key to the protection of teens that live in crime-infested neighborhoods.

There may be decent families living in the most crime-infested neighborhoods striving to give their kids as normal a childhood as they can, encouraging them to stay out of trouble and making sure they do well at school. Many of them try to make their areas better as they shed tears when explaining their frustration.

Dig in or dig out

A majority of parents living with their kids in these high-crime neighborhoods encourage them to rise above the environment they are surrounded by and make use of their strengths rather than submitting to their weaknesses. They either take their kids out of the environment or get more involved in their teen’s life.

Advice for parents

Even in the much-maligned and dangerous settings, there are responsible and caring people. They get involved in their children’s life and communicate with them in order to encourage them to stay out of trouble. The best advice one can give to parents living in such areas is to get involved in your child’s life so that you are aware of what is happening in it. Listen to them instead of just hearing. Get them involved in school activities and keep them busy with family life. Chasing crime away will prevent your child from getting caught in it. Even more important is to keep the violence affecting children living in such areas at bay so that physical and psychological damage can be avoided.

The best solution

The best possibility in this case is moving away from a crime-infested neighborhood to raise mentally and physically healthy children. But for some people moving out is not an option. They have to live in the environment striving to stay out of trouble and keep their kids out of it too. They have to fight the odds to minimize the chances of their children being subject to violence or be a part of the crime world itself.