Life Principles cannot be obtained or searched for when man grows up, but they are formed and become inherent as a lifestyle from little age. As sound concepts, values and virtues should be seeded from an earlier age in man’s life we should teach our children to adhere to them. Some may think that those principles need an understanding so they think their children might be late in learning and adhering to them. However, this is not what happens as what you put in their minds and what they learn about others should start at a very early age, before merge into the society when going to school.
Someone said, “I do not know what I should do with my son who is at Prep school. I want to help him overcome the solitude he surrounds his life with. He does not want to meet anyone or speak to anyone. He trusts nobody and thinks that all people are liars”.
These words made me remember what one of a Lecturer of Psychology and Children Education said that it is the parents duty to realize their role in preparing the child top be lovable by hi peers. When you have a three-year child and you’d like to introduce him to your family or your friends or your neighbors what you would like for him I think that all parents wish to have their child welcomed by his friends. They want them to help him participate in playing with his friends and be happy for being among them. They want older people to treat him gently and kindly. Nevertheless, this is a late step requiring pre-steps to help the child interact positively with the society. The first pre-step is to offer the child true love and show it in situations, especially when he does something wrong and realizes that their parents do not like his behavior but they did lose their love to him. The second matter is to grow in him good values and behaviors like: not to interrupt the conversations of adults, give attention to those who speak with him and, not to hit his friend and participate in decently playing with his peers.
If you do not seed these positive behaviors in your child, you will have nothing but a violent child that others evade his existence. This way your child will gain nothing but rejection from other children and fake smiles from adults. His reaction toward this scene in which he witnesses other people and life in general will be solitude not to mention many other social problems leading to a bigger one that made all of you suffer. This kind of children need nothing but to feel they are accepted and loved and an attempt to their ideas and negative behaviors in a quite atmosphere full of love and with no rush.
General Bishop
Head of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center
