Depriving our children

If I were to ask you – Are today's children deprived? Most of you would answer with a resounding – No. And why is that? Its because we know that we are providing our children with all the comforts imaginable, good food, airconditioned rooms & cars, the latest games and gadgets (laptops, playstations, mobiles), the best schools, good clothes, holidays overseas every year, the list is endless. We give them all this but do we give them our time? Have we sat with them even for a few minutes for a heart to heart talk about what is bothering them? what are their aspirations? are they feeling intimidated by peer pressure? there could be so many things on their mind. But we are so caught up in meeting our own deadlines – professional as well as personal, in sorting out our own priorities, that we hardly bother about this.
Children, today, are deprived not because we do not give them things, but because we do not sufficiently value what they give us. We need to be alert to welcome what children have to offer. Remember what Kahlil Gibran wrote about children,

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Our children are flying forward into areas we have not charted ourselves. If you want to know what the society will be like in the next twenty years, you don't need to read science fiction books, nor do you need to surf the net for articles about this topic, you simply have to go and visit any kindergarten school, you simply have to visit the homes where children between the ages 5 to 10 are living.

Are we teaching our children to be independent, to love, to respect, to laugh or are we busy in bombarding their young minds with what was handed down to us from previous generations – our concepts of right and wrong, our divisive & opinionated beliefs about why we do things the way we do them?