There is something in parents who like making kings of the products of their loin albeit in negativities and bad notoriety! Where they live, their children are free to do whatever they want without a parental check no matter how miniscule it is.
When their indiscretions reach the boiling point, they terrorise their play mates, neighbours and the society entirely! They do so without fuss while they entertain no fear of reining governments or any of their agencies. Something, they may even be agents of those in power in wrecking havocs on the oppositions or the perceived enemies of governments.
While these children are fortunate with a good and moral community which is hellbent desires to stand in loco-parent with the community’s wards, you see these parents demanding that their own children should be left out of the whole strategy to guide and guard the children to moral and purposeful future.
Exotic and non-exotic alcoholic drinks cum drugs are drunk and used at will from the wetness of the morning till the dryness of the night without caring for their health, interpersonal relationships with others and their sanities ! Anger, annoyance and displeasure fly in their midst and while there is none of these chaos, hostility is manufactured across the neighborhood with other gangsters
in the vicinity.
These children, when arguing with their mates, subordinates and superiors on any matter show disdain towards their co-debaters and when they fight they do so in slovenly manners without caring for tomorrow where they can enter an enemy’s camp twice.
While these are going on, instead of the parents to go their ways and make sure that their children are cynosure of all eyes now and tomorrow, they support their dirty moves and still go ahead to antagonize whoever want to strengthen the crookedness in them.
Truth be told, if a man or a woman should consider the many up and downs involving in child-bearing activities, they will not allow anything to touch their children. More truth is that pregnancy as observes by an Arab philosopher, is a pure pain which requires longanimity and forbearance to bear on the parts of the mothers.
Fathers too, are not excluded from this pain! The pain of having to devise how to combat the morning sickness on their wives occasioned by pregnancy! The soreness in doing the tasks of two persons by a person when the tension of pregnancy grows and the labour in delivering it – the push of errands by the hospital staffers and the blames to have left two or an item needed in the hospital in the home, which should be placed on the shoulders of the mothers in the first place, but which is heaped on the fathers’!.
It is on this note that the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) opined that if care is not taken, having children can be sources of negativities in life! This is the reason he said in his Hadith as follows:
” Children are sources of miserliness, cowardice, ignorance and sorrow!”
Children are sources of being a miser! They are one of the causes of miserliness on the parts of their parents. There have been parents who were generous and kindhearted both in cash and kind before they entered marital club ! They went their own ways and supported every good causes both in their immediate families and communities before they had children.
But afterwards, when children had come in, they abandoned every good thing they were doing hitherto except the ones meant for their children. While this is not hundred percent bad, religious wise, it is a dent on the deeds of the parents, for it renders his religion uncompleted _ spending in cash or kind has been one of the unseen pillars of Islam since Islam’s first day on earth.
In the second instance, the prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) avers that children can be a source of being cowardice! This presupposes that their addition into a family can make it behaves like a sissy at the hour of truth for fear of being wounded, maimed or exterminated in the course of the ensuing melee while pressing home its point.
While being careful in dealing with others is a good way of interpersonal skills, one needs also to be wary of unnecessary carefulness which may mar the growth and development of one’s children in the way of boldness which most times aids determination which is a key factor in the success we all crave.
Here we come to the third way where having children can impact negatively on the parents according to our noble prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam)! The prophet ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) asserts that children can be a source of ignorance to their parents.
In a clear term, they can make hitherto knowledgeable and thoughtful parents seemed ignorant! They make them ignorant of the good inherent in strengthening their wards when they err at their formative years so that they would have overcome their perverseness before they start living alone in the nearest future.
They also make them ignorant of the religion fact that no parents can give their children any gift better than good character. For there are many parents who do not teach their wards good characters not to talk of correcting them when they find them wanting in moral rectitude.
Children can also be the source of parents’ sorrow. This is the overall adverse effects of them as sources of miserliness, cowardice and ignorance. It is the culminating effect of abandoning kindheartedness, boldness and application of knowledge in favour of miserliness, cowardice and ignorance because of one’s children.
It is what the glorious Qur’an is pointing at in one of her verses as follows:
” O you who believe! Truly, among your wives and your children are ( some that are ) enemies to yourselves: so beware of them! But if you forgive and overlook , and cover up ( their faults by strengthening their crookedness in the recess of your homes) , verily Allah is oft-forgiving, most Merciful!” _Qur’an 64: 14
The comment of Allama Yusuf Ali on the verse mentioned goes thus:
” In some cases the demands of families, i.e., wife and children may conflict with a man’s moral and spiritual convictions and duties. In such cases, he must guard against the abandonment of his convictions , duties, and ideals to their requests or desires. But he must not treat them harshly. He must make reasonable provision for them, and if they persist in opposing his clear duties and convictions, he must forgive them and not expose them to shame or ridicule, while at the same time holding on to his clear duty”.
Parental affection for their children and their affection for their parents are like a two-faced sword. At time it may be beneficial yet if care is not taken, it may cut the hands which hold it and become source of sorrow to the owner.
Simply put, their affection for you and your affection for them , may be a source of strength if it is pure, just as it may be a danger if it is based on selfish or unworthy motives. So also riches and worldly goods have their advantages as well as dangers. This is what Allah meant in Qu’ran 64: 15 as follows:
” Your riches and your children may be but a trial; whereas Allah , with Him is the highest reward!”
It posits that if one allows the love and affection one has for his children or wife to becloud one’s sense of thinking, one will neither benefit from one’s love for them or from the object of his love itself which are one’s children, in the long run.
This is the case of parents who do not see any sense in guilding their children to good they want them to imbibe nor handle them to those who can supervise them in ways of moral and purposeful learning, until they become parasites on their community draining the bloods of the innocent living in that society.
When what afflicts them festers and becomes uncontrollable, they resort to all sorts of mundane and spiritual ways forward which are they being they had embraced them earlier on before their children became a dry fish which cannot be bent, they will now be smiling and contented with the good fate Allah Has fated for them now.
Readers! Prayer and moral efforts are best applied and fruitful much more at the formative years of the children before they are formed and charted their own ways than when they have tasted life on their own! It has been an informed observation of this writer that guilding one’s children and wards into moral and rectitude when coming up as teenagers is more beneficial than praying for them to be fruitful and guided when they are at their adulthood.
Moreover, while ninety-five percent of children directed into a moral good at their formative years tend to be successful out of hundred, whereas,in the case of those whose parents only prayed for at their adulthood but who did not enjoy the benefits of moral schooling while growing up, only five percent out of hundred tend to be successful.
Vivid Impacts Of Early Morals On Children
Samratu Bn Jundab ( Radiya-llahu anhu) said that :” we were children during the early time of the prophet’s apostleship and we used to learn Islamic creeds before we learnt the glorious Qur’an and afterwards we learnt the Qu’ran and this made us increased favourably in Islamic etiquettes and belief”
Imam Ahmad ( Rahimahu llahu Rahmatan wasi’a) reported with the chain of Waqii’ ( Rahimahu llahu Rahmatan wasi’a) that the mother of the giant of Islamic Fiqh and Hadith ,Sufyan Al-Thaoriy used to encourage her son, Al-Thaoriy earlier at his formative years thus :
” O you my Son ! Seek knowledge and I will profusely cover you with my love!”
This is the tradition of the people that know the goodness inherent in guiding children earlier in their lives to the life of moral, knowledge and rectitude in contrast to those who do not fancy this enviable system of upbringing! It is gratifying that the rewards of tutoring children beneficial knowledge and character are good life and the hereafter as well as peace of mind in the society where these children live while the punishments of neglecting children without giving them beneficial knowledge and good character are senseless life, hellfire in the hereafter and chaos where these children are unfortunate to domicile.