I believe that parents play a vital role in influencing children during the developmental process as they create a lasting impact on the child's overall development as well as socialization development. As children grow, they understand a number of factors that influence their attitudes and that child's behavior. These attitudes and characteristics are initially learned from parents. I also believe that when we are in middle school we want to be different to fit in with our peers. We see our peers and believe that the things they are doing are interesting; we also want them to like us, so we start doing the same things as them, which shows that friends start to influence us more than adults. Parents who are involved with their children, who know where they are after school and have met most of their friends, have a positive effect on their children's lives. Parents who are involved in their children's lives are more likely to have children who are less likely to participate in risky behaviors such as smoking or drinking alcohol. Children with involved parents appear to have better self-esteem and perform better in school. Children observe parents and their behaviors and are more likely to follow their parents' example. Behaviors demonstrated by parents influence a child's habits. An example of how peers can have more influence than parents in my life who were when I was in middle school, at the time I dated girls who were not a good influence on me, I know, but at the time I thought that my parents parents didn't want me to have friends. Those friends were always late to school and class, in this school we had seven different classes and we had five minutes to get to each topic......halfway through the paper......the students kept turning to them in their natural language, but the children respond in English. What the children of immigrants get is not a compromise, nor a mixture. They end up using the language and culture of their peers purely and simply” (p. 30). In Howard Garner's argument, I can see where he is right when he states that “Harris and most of the authorities she cites are not studying child-rearing in general, in fact they are studying child-rearing especially in the U.S. white and middle class during the last half century” (p. 43). I believe, as I stated before, that both our parents and our peers can influence us at different times in our lives. However, for Judith Harris to have a better argument, she could have used more studies outside the United States. However, either way, both peers and parents have a major impact on our lives.