Daily Times

Often when one sees a happy child strolling along a pavement with an ice-cream cone in one hand and his dog’s leash in the other, one is immediately filled with joy. Because children can do that to you, they can bring a smile on your face without even breaking the slightest of sweat. But, nobody knows that the happy child on the sidewalk is actually not so happy because usually in the process of admiring a beautiful rose we forget to look at the thorns that reside just below the surface, same is the case with the child because he is the rose with many thorns pricking beneath his surface, one of the main ones being neglect by his parents over the most trivial matters in his life.

A child, like any other living thing in this world, needs care-taking and love. A child needs the assurance that he/she can depend on his/her parents, and when that assurance is not given, the said child begins to retract, just like the rose which when not given water, wilts.

Many modern working couples, in the urge to give their child a luxurious lifestyle forget to give them the basic necessities they require to survive in this world, love and trust. These parents work overtime and trust the security of their children with maids and nannies which, at the time being may not seem much but have a crippling effect on the child’s upbringing.

A child requires to know that he/she has a constant presence in his/her life which he/she can depend on when things get rough. Especially in those crucial pre-teen/teenage years when the child needs his/her parents the most, they aren’t there for him/her and until the parents realize what has happened and why, its usually too late and the damage has already been done. Such children find solace in acting out and keeping the company of others like them, children who are just as damaged and broken as they are. This puts everything on the line for them. their futures, their lives and their motives are all but child’s play to them. they are convinced that since they were never raised by good parents, they could never be good parents as well. Their lives are ruined by the guilt that maybe their was a problem with them that their parents never reached out to them. They live their lives in fear and panic, only because daddy or mommy weren’t there with him/her to get him/her through the most crucial patches of their lives.

I know a couple of cases like that, like how a little girl, whose father abandoned her and her mother when she was still a child, grew up in an environment without her father, has a lot of affect on her as she lives in the present, which usually, in the future, tends to end up in self esteem issues; like how the girl has been insecure about her own image and about the people around her ever since her dad left when she was a child, also, she has trust issues, a lot of them.

Children ask questions because they do not know the difference between right or wrong. Reprimanding kids just by saying that they are too young to understand anything is wrong by my views, threatening them by harsh words or beating for them to stay away from something will only make them attracted towards it and that is all but a natural phenomena. Parents expect children to understand what they are saying when they are saying it but they make no real effort towards them to make them understand what is it they are saying. This usually results in children picking up mixed signals and getting their wires crossed which does more damage than it was intended to do good, and children act out in ways which are not all wholesome. later on parents blame their acting out as a result of bad company which cannot be justified in any way but is still accepted by society as it is, let’s just say, an easy way out.

Logically if we trace the problem back to its origin, the unanswered question, then almost every parent in this world will pick up their pitchforks and torches (yes i went there) because taking the blame is always hard but somehow even harder when you’re a parent who was doing, or thought he/she was doing, something for the well-being of their child.

If you ask me, which you are since you’re reading this, i believe the best way to lead a child is by example and the best way to set an example is to be there for them when they actually need you. Parents believe that they are protecting their children from the bad influences of society, which to some extent may be true, but that is no real reason to lock them in a tower and cut of their resources. The only way to make children aware of their surroundings is to make them experience it up-close and if parents are still paranoid then the best thing they can do is to be close to their children enough to be their confidante so they wouldn’t hide stuff from you if and when (mostly when) they experience it because contrary to what most parents wish, children will grow up. Now the real question is do they grow up with a support and backbone or they don’t?

So basically the whole point of this is; being a protective parent is okay but being a paranoid one is not, being worried about your child’s grades is okay but pressuring them for it is not, Being worried about their future is okay but eating their childhood for it is not, robbing a child of their innocence and blaming it on their company or society is not, i repeat, NOT OKAY. No matter how anybody would try to justify it.