Not imitating the bad

Mr Phong signed the guarantee papers and took Thảo to his home. Thảo was a child from the neighbourhood, a few houses away from Mr Phong. Thảo's parents quarrelled constantly, even fought. Whenever one did something wrong, such as adultery or gambling, they blamed the other for having been at fault first. They did not divorce because they didn't want Thảo left helpless, though whether that was true no one knew, but Thảo's spirit was already shattered. He dropped out of school to follow a bad crowd, swore, and stole. Recently he had been taken to the police station, and his parents did not have the standing to vouch for him and take him home. Mr Phong, out of pity, acted as guarantor. He remembered that before, Thảo had been a good child who often ran over to his house to play and spoke politely.
Mrs Phong handed him some clothes and told him to wash thoroughly and then come and eat his fill. She cooked him a bowl of tasty noodles, and seeing he was still not full, cooked another bowl, which he swallowed completely. With his stomach full, he mumbled thanks to the two of them.
The couple told him to sit on the sofa between them. Mr Phong held his hand and asked:

• Do you see that you were wrong?
  He bowed his head and mumbled:
• Yes.
• I remember that you used to be well behaved and polite. How did you end up like this?
  Thảo was silent, seeming not to understand either. Mr Phong said:
• I think you were influenced by your parents. Your parents speak roughly and often rush into fighting. Each recounts the other's faults. You witnessed it and it was injected into your young mind. You didn't have the strength to filter the wrong out of your mind. Everyone sees you at fault, but I see you as a victim who gradually became a culprit. If you don't have the strength to sift wrong from right, and imitate whatever anyone does, in the end you will go completely bad and become a wicked person whom everyone hates.
  Mrs Phong said:
• Stay here a few days, and let Uncle teach you about right and wrong.
  Thảo, tears welling, mumbled yes.
  Mr Phong went on:
• You must be strong enough to recognise right and wrong so as not to copy others' wrongs. I can't take you in to raise you, but I will always be glad if you keep coming over to see us. But the first condition is that you must promise us you will no longer take in other people's bad ways, even if they are your parents'.
  Thảo said in a small voice:
• Yes, I promise. I will ask to go back to school. I will often come over here to listen to your teaching. 👨‍⚕️

A basic nature of society is that people imitate one another. We call it social influence. People unconsciously imitate the behaviour, words and character of those around them. People of the same family easily have similar voices. Children abroad will pronounce like native speakers.
Children unlucky enough to be born in a neighbourhood with many social evils will mostly grow up to become criminals. Conversely, children born in a country with a fine cultural tradition grow up naturally having every standard, decent way of behaving.

We can foresee the future of children in poor, backward countries, with little education and crime everywhere: it will be hard for them to grow into good people. They will join some gang to survive, and almost always have their lives cut short.
This imitative nature with its social element leads us to think of two things. One is that all of us have a duty to set a fine, exemplary model so that anyone around us can unconsciously imitate those fine things. The other is that we must be strong enough to sift the good and bad, right and wrong around us in order to stop bad things entering our minds unconsciously.

Do not blurt out wrong words, do not lose your temper and do wrong, for that wrong will slip into the mind of someone near us. The most pitiable are our children, closest to us and the easiest to imitate us. Once their minds have gone bad, later they will treat us harshly. We shall receive the bad consequences that we ourselves created.
Weigh each good deed and each good word, because in the long run we shall receive good karmic results from them.

We should also talk with children and train them to distinguish right from wrong and good from bad, so as to refuse the wrong decisively and accept only the right. We must teach children not to unconsciously imitate everything of the people around them.