Children Are Tomorrow’s People

We hold the future in our hands because our children are tomorrow’s people. If we were allowed to bequeath only one quality – just one attribute – to our children, I wonder which we would choose? What would we consider to be the quintessence of goodness that is of the utmost importance for the human being to possess?

Would we choose patience, the mother of all virtues, compassion for fellow-creatures, or perhaps integrity, endurance, perseverance, farsightedness? It’s a hard choice, but of course, such a choice would be totally unnecessary, wouldn’t it? For all we have to do is to instill in our children love for God and their neighbour, and all else will follow. As a matter of fact, the sooner we do this the better for our children and for the world. Is there any reason why we shouldn’t begin now?

The seconds are ticking away. Our children are the ones who will step into the new world of tomorrow to inherit it. What a sobering thought. Someone once defined a schoolroom as ‘four walls with tomorrow inside’. It is an apt description. Our children are indeed our future.

So what have we done for their lasting peace and happiness? What have we given them that they can live for and cling to that will keep them going in the face of all the odds against them?

What a mysterious person a baby is, like a present wrapped up and hidden away until Christmas morning! Can words adequately describe a newborn infant? Soft as a rose petal, sweet as honey, a masterpiece pointing to a source beyond her parents. As surely as the fresh mountain stream springs from the deep, dark core of the rock, this miniature was born in the heart of God! If anything could match the pristine purity and wonder that is an infant, is it not the wonder and innocence in his eyes?

What do we do with them? How soon before they become shop-soiled? The spoiled cake can be thrown away and a new one made, but a child will bear the consequences of our mishandling for life.

A well-known story tells of a prisoner about to be executed. He was asked if he wished to see his mother. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If she had taught me right, I wouldn’t be here.’ Harsh words, but perhaps true. When they are grown and mature, the things we taught them will be there for them even when we are gone. Have we taught our children the right things?

A child is a child for such a short time. Seldom do parents wake up to the fact before it’s too late. Whatever had to be done or said was postponed to a tomorrow that never came. ‘The work will wait,’ says Patricia Clafford, ‘while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won’t wait while you do the work.’

My mummy does not love me any more,’ wrote Suresh in his composition. ‘She loves only my baby sister. She does not kiss me or hug me tight as she used to before. I wish I could be a baby once again, then my mother will love me again.’

When a child falls and cuts his knee, how quickly we wash and dress the wound with soothing antiseptic ointments. But when his tender young heart is broken, we hardly notice it! Sometimes we offer him a lollipop or a sweet to make up for what was absent and the warmth of love that was needed. How many jigsaw bits will be missing when the picture is finished? Will they be the crucial bits?

A survey conducted in a certain country revealed that what children feared most was not nuclear war or natural calamities, but the breakup of their homes. If only parents would remember that children do not ask to be born. And their needs are simple – the most important one being love from both parents. Is it not worth forsaking differences and living in peace, for the sake of the child?

Are we expecting too much from our children? Is it not really our ego that hurts when our children fail an exam? If we do not accept their failures, how can we expect them to do so?

Why are we so examination-oriented? Sometimes one wonders if our system of education is helping the children to be educated and prepared to lead useful lives, or whether it is merely a device by which the unfit are weeded out? From what frame of reference are we looking at success? Are we conforming too much to the standards of our society?

THE HIDDEN DIMENSION

A wise old lady who is well-read and keenly interested in current affairs has this to say, ‘The trouble with the world today is that people have forgotten that there is a spiritual dimension to life.’ Put in a nutshell, this is what the matter is, and we can see it all around us.

Materialism has become so prevalent that matters of faith, the deeper truths of life and the reality of God have been totally neglected and even ignored. Integrity and honesty have made their exit. People have begun to live as if there is no tomorrow, nothing beyond the grave and no one to whom they must answer.

A short digression…

No one will dispute that good and evil are realities (why else are there good people and bad people, justice and injustice?). Even a person with no religious conviction would be able to see for himself that there are powers of good and evil. And a power that is not of human origin has to be from the spiritual realm.

I mention it only to stress that if children are not pointed in the right direction, they can so easily go in the wrong one, and fall into the snares of destructive habits. Hence, influencing the young from an early age is very important.

A child comes into the world with a clean slate. Is it too much to ask that we fill it with so much good that there is absolutely no room for evil? And may we, as elders, become their models and examples to follow.

Manorama Ratnakar, a former school teacher, is a homemaker and a freelance writer. Excerpted from Raising Children God’s Way, authored by Juliet Thomas and published by OM Books, Hyderabad.