LOVING FIRMNESS

“Kindness,

Which is not balanced

With firmness

May prove to be weakness.”

It was a busy day. And I was on a long call. I knew that someone was trying to reach out to me through the intercom. But I couldn’t attend the call. Some time later, I received a call again, and I was told that two of our students met with a bike accident. The boy who was riding the bike was killed on the spot, and the pillion rider suffered multiple injuries. They were rushed to the government hospital. The body was taken to the mortuary. My heart sank on hearing this. “Oh no,” I screamed. I was dreading this for several years. So many warnings were issued to students and parents that the inevitable will happen if they don’t pay heed to it. A precious life was lost in a moment. Could a greater tragedy befall a family! An untimely demise of a promising youth, who had a great future ahead of him.

It is an irreparable loss for the parents, having lost their only child. The very purpose of their life has been lost. How will they live the rest of their life? Crying out in agony with no solution in sight. We love our children so much that we endorse whatever they do. We cannot say no to them. Children too take advantage of this. They want to do what their friends are doing. Peer pressure is very high. But if every parent can be strict with their children, we can create them as responsible individuals. “Love is not love that pampers and makes them fall in life. Love is love that creates.” There are certain things that we can permit them to do, but there are certain things we should not allow them to do. Just because everybody is doing it, a wrong does not become right.

It is a common sight to see young children riding a powered two-wheeler without a license. Riding is a skill, but an age for license has been fixed because, only at that age there will be some maturity (or so I hope).  For convenience sake, we allow children to go to the grocery shop and vegetable shop in a powered two-wheeler, not realizing that they will desire to roam around in the bike and go out with their friends too. We are unnecessarily sowing the seed for wrong desires in them. If we do not educate them on respecting the law of the country, they will not grow up to be law abiding citizens. Wrong desires entertained could become fatal.

Our love for our children should not make us endorse everything that they do. We have to take the right decisions for them. A knife in the hands of a doctor will save a life. But a knife in the hands of a criminal will be fatal for someone. A minor child riding a powered two-wheeler could be fatal for somebody else on the road as well. What we do for our convenience can one day boomerang on us. We will regret it for the rest of our life. If each and everyone can parent their children with the right values and habits, the world will witness the renaissance of a new society that lives by what is right, and not by what is easy and convenient.

#Thoughtfulthursdays #nsn #nsnschool #mentoring #parenting