Children of the future

I was reading through one of the magazines about our children and the future. It was both scary and disturbing. There were articles about “teens and porns”, “bullies”,”fighting” and other unnerving topics. Basically, the blames goes back to the parents and their parenting ways.

My husband and me visited a friend last Monday and he was telling us about another old friend of him and my hubby who had an accident in Sadao. They joked around about this guy who (what I could gather from their conversation) is a bully and loves to fight. The friend told us that he was bragging about his son involved in a fist fight with his friends. Imagine, the father is encouraging the son to continue his bad behavior and to top it up; is showing his son the very same example by involving in the same unsightly behavior as well.

Kids will watch and follow their parents behavior. To make it worse, they could mixed with the wrong group and became worst than their parents. Someone told me a story about a man whom started stealing since kindergarden time, The first day he started stealing was a pencil case and his mother praised him for being so clever taking whatever he wants. Being proud with the praised, he started stealing more and stuff. Being a man he started robbery and took a life. He was caught and later sentenced to death. His final wish was to meet his mom. On the last day, his mom went crying to see him. He hug his mom and bite off her ears. He said before he left “Mom, you should listen to me when I first took the pencil case and scolded me but you didn’t want to listen that I was heading for trouble that first day. If only you would listen….”

Just a few days ago, there was a report on Form 1 girls fighting in the school’s surau. Whatever happens to self-respect and dignity. Kids nowadays, wanted to grow up faster than their age..It could be seen that teenagers around the age of 10 to 12 years old hanging out at taman selera or shopping complex. Where are their parents? Did they know where their kids are??

I was walking from my office to the cobbler’s place last week. I had to passed through under a flyover to get to the other side of the road. Dewan Bandaran Seberang Prai had planted lovely plants under the flyover and made a walking/cycling path to the other side of the road. I could see about 6 to 8 boys in school uniforms hanging around there at 10 am. Definitly, they skipped school just to “lepak” there.

Are parents too busy making money to notice their children needed their care? I knew one guy who had never been to her daughter’s school except the first day of registration. He never knew when her daughter had exams or never even met the teachers. He never even signed the report cards. The daughter will skipped school and wrote the letter herself to the teacher. And the guy had never known that her daughter was lying to him all his life. He trusted her 150%. Once, the daughter was caught bringing a boy into her room and she started lying that the boy was her cousin’s friend and came to her room to pick up something. And he believed her….I was shocked when I found out that he believed his daughter than a neighbor who caught her red handed. From what I heard, the boy left through the back door at the time when nobody was at home and she was only 16 yo.

One thing for sure…no matter how busy you are, always take time to talk to your kids…Listen to them, especially those unspoken words..A mother especially will know what in their children’s mind. The special bonding between parents and children will help to nuture their identity and self respect to become a respectable adult in the future…Insyaalah…