Essay On Parents as Friends

In the matter of the overall growth of a child the parental care has a very important part to play. Lack of this care results in children falling a prey to all the social ills that the modern society is wrought with. Neglected at home the growing mind of the child seeks company and companionship. Watching shows on the T.V. which these days, mainly expose crime, and sex, the little child begins to think that this is the way of normal life. All this leaves a very unhealthy effect on the child’s mind.

Where mothers remain busy in kitty parties and fathers busy with the offices or their business, what are children to do? After spending five to six hours at school, while at home they crave for company. Books cannot engage them for all times. As they step out of the house, there are gangsters and drug-traffickers ready and waiting to catch them as their parents have big money and the children have big pocket money available to them. Servants and ‘ayahs’ are as bad a company for these young rich.

The newspaper reports that a young boy, still in his teens, son of a man in position, goes to his friend in the afternoon, and asks him to come along with him. The friend just says, ‘I’m not feeling well, I would not come’ and in utter disgust this young caller fires a bullet from a pistol which he carries the bullet fortunately strikes the wall. What does this show? What mental frustration and disgust does this exhibit? This perverted mindset of the young is only because he suffers a neglect at home.

What is needed and is most necessary is that parents should be friends to their children. Even while at work they should keep contacting their children at home on phone, knowing from them what they did at school, how went their day, what is there in the fridge that they should eat; what they were to get from the father or the mother in the evening when they come back home. Such intimate and concerning enquiries even on a phone makes the child feel so good. He thinks that there are his parents caring for him and that is a great satisfaction to the child. He feels a sense of companionship and need not seek it elsewhere.

When back at home in the evening, the father and the mother should spend most of their time with their children, play with them, cut jokes with them; tell stories to them and ask children to tell their stories about how they spend their day at school. Parents need not be overbearing and too sombre – they need to be close and friendly children may find in them a true companion – a friend a true confidant. This would provide to the child all the mental food for company which he or she craves for and makes him or her at peace within. Never would he be led to seek company elsewhere. This parental attention is a cure and a tonic to the growing mind in the otherwise, tense and tattered social life in today’s world.

Let the parents awake to this consciousness and act accordingly. That would get rid them of so many problem with their children and relieve children also of unwanted influences.