It is common to hear our VOHRA parents airing their dissatisfaction with their children's behaviour. Parents anywhere, wherever they may live or whatever they may believe in would like to see their children behave like their parents. This expectation we feel, and all our readers will agree with us is unrealistic. Children have never totally behaved like their parents and grandparents and they will never ever behave totally like their parents and grandparents. We the parents and grandparents can ask ourselves if we behaved like our parents and grandparents or behaved in ways expected of us by our parents and grandparents and our answer will be 'NO.' If we the parents and grandparents did not behave like our parents and grandparents than what right will we have to expect our children to behave like us, the parents or like their grandparents.
We feel we must expect our children to behave differently and not behave like us, but we feel that the behaviour of our children must not take them away from our religious beliefs and our religious practices. Historically we have always been exposed to changes from generation to generation, but the changes were not that many, and they were rarely drastic. Besides this there were social mechanisms like joint and extended families and there were village elders which helped keep children in check. Things are very different now. The joint and extended families have lost their roles and old men in villages are no longer respected nor listened to. Besides the weakening of the village social system which kept most of young persons in check our children are now growing up in a socioeconomic and technically advancing and fast changing environment, an environment that we as parents and grandparents did not experience when we were growing up. What our children are growing up with is meant to affect their observations and thinking and ultimately their behaviour. Blaming our children, blaming others and blaming the changes taking place around us will not help us nor help our children to behave in ways laid down by our religion. As Surti Sunni Vohras most of us do not have enough or appropriate religious and secular education nor the knowledge to understand our children's behaviour nor the ability to persuade them to give up their behaviour which may be harmful to their religious beliefs.
Over the years we have relied on our families, our relatives and village elders to keep our children from adopting or accepting behaviour that was thought to be bad for us Muslims. We feel this old system can no longer make our children behave in ways expected by the parents as well as our religion. We feel there is an urgent need to find ways to help our children to stay away from falling victims to behaviour that will take them away from their families as well as religious beliefs. We must not leave them to sort themselves out. This may not happen. We must not leave them to receive guidance and support from their parents as their parents may not have the knowhow to help them and we must not seek the help of those who may not have the right sort of language, social and communication skills and right sort of training or an appropriate approach towards working with children.
Providing our children with religious education is very necessary and it must go on, but we feel there is an urgent need to provide our children with awareness about issues that are likely to have negative effect on their behaviour. Without acquiring the right sort of awareness our children will not be able to differentiate between what is good for them and what is not good for them. We feel our children must have access to awareness training to help them understand better the issues they come across when they attend the madressa for religious studies or attend schools for acquiring secular education or watch television or use their mobile phones, meet with friends and acquaintances.
We feel whilst our madressas and dar-ululooms provide our children with a lot of very necessary and very good religious education they do not have a role to concentrate on helping those they teach to acquire an understanding of the modern world and how the inventions and attractions of the modern world and the social and economic changes taking place around us and the changes our families are undergoing helps mould and shape our children's behaviour. There is an urgent need, we feel for some of our Ulema and Alimas to develop an interest in learning about the behaviour of our children. This is an area of work that is very important, but we have never paid any attention to it. We left our children to learn from the madressa they attended and we left to learn from the secular subjects teaching schools they attended and we left them to learn from their friends and from the outside world without the parents trying to find out what their children were learning.
To learn about the behaviour of our children and find ways and means to help them from falling victims to un-Islamic behaviour as well as to help those who have fallen victims to unacceptable behaviour, we feel we need to conduct research. Research will help us learn the prevalence of un-Islamic behaviour among our children, as well as how they acquire such behaviour. We feel if we know more of our children's behaviour, we could also come up with ways to stop our children from falling for unacceptable behaviour as well as help those who have fallen for un-Islamic behaviour to give up what they have fallen for and we should continue asking the ALMIGHTY ALLAH to help us as well as our children to move towards the STRAIGHT AND NARROWpath. |
