Poignant Parenting
What responsibility do you have towards your children? Apart from the physical sustenance and care of the child, what else must you do to become a competent parent? And what should you expect from your children?
Should they become mirror images of you and your spouse? Mere shadows of people from an old era?
They should have the space and time to explore their own individuality. To become the best person they can become. Without the overbearing weight of expectations from their parents.
Perhaps the best way to think about this eternal tension comes from a century old short poem from Kahlil Gibran’s seminal book ‘The Prophet’.
Maria Popova of BrainPickings recently wrote about this poem. Its heat touching and beautiful. I love the way it starts and can’t get the opening lines out of my head —
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.
Checkout the whole poem on the BrainPickings blog —
On Children: Poignant Parenting Advice from Kahlil Gibran
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