When children are growing into adults, we have to make decisions for ourselves. The big decisions and the small decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong. We listen to the people around us to get an idea of their experiences and help our knowledge grow vaster.

Children listen to everything that adults say and do — not to copy them, but to understand why they do what they do. From the moment children are born, they can only learn from their parents. Your parents are the only reference you have. Your whole world in that time is your parents.

You take in what your parents do and why they do it. Then you reach the age to start school. That’s when new ways of doing things are learned and you understand why and how you should do them.

That’s when parents start asking themselves about what type of influences you should be around. And you start realizing that people aren’t always credible. That brings about the question of who is.

Who should you watch and learn from? What conversations should you listen to? Are your parents always credible, and if not, when are they being credible?

That’s the most important thing we learn as we grow up. And if you get it wrong, there are always consequences. But mostly, we can all learn from that and grow to be more credible people ourselves.

Most people will direct you to people with power over you to describe as credible. Your teachers and counselors. These are the people you’re told to admire. Even in some cases, your parents.

It’s not till we grow a bit older that life forces to realize the people we originally trusted aren’t necessarily the ones we should always emulate.

Who should we trust, and what is the right thing to do? We’ve developed a conscience to tell us this, but that conscience was influenced by the people around us. Who do we watch now?

Sometimes older family members are who we watch and they, in a way, start to seem more like us. Sometimes it’s our siblings or neighbors. Other times it’s our peers who have found themselves under the right educators. And those are the people who make us who we are.

Along with our mentors, we use our own experiences. We listen to others and the facts to formulate our own opinions. That’s what make us who we are. And the fact that we all don’t always get it right is only proof we’re human.

Annie Blakeley is an eighth-grader at Hamlet Middle School, a band and chorus student and a member of First United Methodist Church in Hamlet.

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Annie Blakeley

Contributing Columnist