The Child Has His Own Future

 The greatest obligation to our children is; to prepare them to understand and deal effecively with the world; in which they will  live and not with the wrold we have known, or the world we would prefer to have.

Khalil Gibran has so beautifully expressed these feeling in his famous book The Prophet. When the Prophet was asked by the people to comment upon 'The Children' this is what he had said:-

“Your children are not your children.
They are sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

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.
The archer sees the make upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness.
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He also loves the bow that is stable.”

He says that the soul of  the children dwell in the house of tomorrow. The children have to life in future that we as  their parents or grandparents can't even imagine.

The philospher emphasises the fact that we should not force our opinions upon our children but at the same time he also lays emphasis that the parents need to ensure that the child becomes both strong and discilplined in life and for this if required he needs to be strong in handling them.