Do you Steamroll your children?

Whether it be in selecting a course of study or selecting a life long partner, it is commonplace to hear about numerous instances where parents have pressurised their children into doing things against their own freewill. This is simply because parents think that they can rule their children’s lives because they were instrumental in bringing them into the world. I think it is highly unfair, coz after all the children will have to live with the consequences of such decisions in the end. What’s utterly tragic is the fact that generally in certain cultures the parental “Iron fist ruling” tradition keeps reoccurring over and over again, due to it being inculcated in their society and community.

All children long for love, affection and understanding from their parents irrespective of whether they are a toddler or an adult. Domineering parents fail to see their children for who they really are and most of the time end-up by paying the high price of loosing them as such children will undoubtedly resent their parents and will drift further and further away from them. Therefore, I believe that good parents should always guide their children through life and try their best to bring them up with good morals and a strong sense of right and wrong. At the same time parents should treat and respect their children as individuals (as Mia mentioned in a comment to one of my recent posts) and accept them for who they are.

I would like to end with insightful words written by Kahlil Gibran

"Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow thatis stable."