Raise Our Children Well

When I bought fried tofu and tempe in my neighbour who sold snacks, rice and drinks in the night in the corner of my village intersection, I stayed with her for a while accompanying her wrapping the rice and the side dishes. 

While doing that, we talked about our lives. We shared our problems and ideas, expressed our emotions about many things happened in our environment. Many things we talked from our different points of views. 

Until she told me about the behaviour of our neighbour's grandson who held her hen so tightly until it died in his hands. His mother watched her son action without telling and warning him. She just let her son do that. 

What a mother!

How could she do that?

She is an undergraduate degree woman. She must know how to raise her son well. She is an educated woman though she is a house wife. She dedicates her life to take care of her husband and children well.

I don't understand it at all.

She also kept silent looking at her son dumping trash and throwing sand and gravels to my terrace floor. There were also her mother, her father, her elder sister, her younger sister, her elder brother in laws and her nephews. I could not let that happened in front of my eyes. I yelled loudly. It had already happened for weeks and I did not know who threw trash and gravels on my terrace floor. 

How can your son throw trash and gravels in my terrace but you just keep silent?

It is like a boy without having parents.

It is like an uneducated child.

....

I did those in purpose.

Some of my neighbours told me about his bad behaviour. His grandparents and parents don't say anything to stop him to do his bad behaviour. 

When her son did bad things in front of me, I had to stop him doing that.

I can't let those happened again and again.

Children imitate people in their surroundings. 

If they are never forbidden to do bad things, they will think that it is okay to do that. They will do it repeatedly. Again and again. 

It is not the children's faults.

That's the parents' faults.

Children must know what is right and wrong. They must know what they can do or can't do. They must understand how to behave well to hang around with other people. They have to learn how to socialize with other people well in the world. 

They must know and undertand that there are rewards and punishments for all what they have done. They must know that they have to be responsible for what they do. There are consequences for everything they do. 

If children don't know the rules of getting around and hanging around with other people in the world, they will be considered barbaric. They will be punished by the society. Their lives will be hard and uncomfortable. 

It is not easy to raise children.

I know that though I don't have children of my own. 

I deal with teenagers at school day by day. I know exactly the teenagers who have beèn raised well or not. It can be seen from their behaviour and attitudes. 

It can't be hidden.

It is clearly seen.

Have we raised our children well?