Children need help in learning who they are and what they can become.

Parents and teachers rely on an old saying regarding children: “Do as I say and not as I do.”

Children learn who they are and what they can become by what they are told, but primarily they emulate their parents and the role models that they see in their families, their schools, their community, and their country. Children also need heroes to idealize and emulate. When none are available, they create them. Superheroes, such as Superman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wonder Woman, and Mia Hamm are examples.

The process for children and adolescents of becoming who they are is described in various ways: primarily it involves emulating and identifying with parents and extended family. But the school, community, the larger country and world around them also provide important role models and heroes. It is sad to say, not all families do well in this regard. Also, the media and our society often emphasize violent, amoral, provocative, self-indulgent and avaricious individuals as subjects of attention in the media, and, sadly, for emulation by our youth.

Children need role models and heroes to emulate and for identification. Our society has many valuable role models in many fields. They do not always achieve the recognition and visibility they deserve, particularly for our children and youth who need them. This is a time for leaders and role models to stand up and be counted. It is also a time for all of us to point to what our society believes in and stands for; to highlight our valuable leaders and achievers as figures for emulation by our children. There are many real and valuable heroes and constructive contributors to the good of our world who deserve recognition and the attention of our youth. Grand Lifestyle Publisher’s Challenges For The Not-Forgotten book project seeks to do just that.

Dr. Hughes is a physician who specializes in child and adolescent psychiatry. He is director of the Hughes Family Psychiatry Center in Coral Gables, Florida; clinical professor of psychiatry (voluntary) at the University of Miami School of Medicine; is listed in “The Best Doctors in America Fourth Edition” (1998); former director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine; a former faculty member of the Harvard Medical School; and practiced at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.