CHERISHING THE LOVE OF OUR CHILDREN

Dr. Tesfa G. Gebremedhin

West Virginia University

Our children express their love to us in so many ways in addition to smiles and tears. Some of their expressions are skillful and creative and many times we fail to realize and understand their deeds and words of love. I have received a very interesting story from a friend in which I thought we all can learn a lot from. The story goes as follows.

There was a single parent – a mother with her little girl - who lives from hand to mouth and have no assistance from a dead-bit ex-husband; she did not have money to spare for holidays like Christmas. Sometime ago the mother punished her five year old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper. Since money was tight and hard to get, the mother became even more upset when the little girl used the gold paper to decorate a gift box to put under the Christmas tree. Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her mother the next morning on Christmas and then said, "This is for you, Momma." The mother was embarrassed by her earlier over reaction, but her anger flared again when she opened the box and found it was empty. The mother got angry and spoke to her daughter in a harsh manner. “Don't you know, young lady, when you give someone a present there is supposed to be something inside the package?" The little girl had tears in her eyes and said, "Oh, Momma, it is not empty! I blew kisses into it until it was full." The mother was crushed. The mother fell on her knees and put her arms around her little girl. She begged her little girl’s forgiveness for her thoughtless anger and hasty, unreasonable reaction towards the little girl. It was so unfortunate that a car accident took the life of the little girl only a short time later, and it is told in the story that the mother kept that gold box by her bed for all the years of her life. Whenever she was discouraged or faced difficult problems in her lonely life, she would open the gold box and take out imaginary kisses and remember the love of her daughter who had put the kisses there.

The moral lesson of this story is that in a very real sense, each of us, as human beings and parents, have been given a Golden box filled with unconditional love and kisses from our children, family and friends. There is no precious possession or gift anyone could hold or receive from anyone more than the unconditional love from our own children. The love of children to their parents brings the love of family and friends; the love of family and friends brings the love of community, the love of community to its constituents brings the integrity of our cultural heritage and identity, and the integrity of our own identity brings respect and dignity to our community and its constituents.

Being a parent can be a joy, but it is also a tough job because parents today face very real and sometimes frightening concerns about their children’s lives. There is not just one right way to raise children. And there is no such thing as a perfect parent -- or a perfect child. As our children get older, they have their own interests, problems, even their own language that is very foreign to their own parents. When our children make mistakes, we don't say, "You were bad." Instead, we need to explain what the children did wrong because it is better to criticize the behavior, not the children. It is necessary to praise our children. When our children do a good job in school or behave well, we need to tell them that we are proud of them. If we lavish praise on our children and demonstrate that they are worthwhile, they will feel very good about themselves. But if we are cold, critical, or absent, our children will tend to feel that they are not worthwhile and not very lovable. We should make our children feel safe and protected by comforting them when they are scared and lost and work with them to eliminate behaviors that keep our children from reaching their potentials.

Likewise, no parent is perfect. We all make mistakes. Even loving parents sometimes do things they do not mean to do, like yell at a child or call a child a bad name. Many parents lose their temper with their children. It is OK to feel angry, but it is not OK to take it out on our children and it is bad if we are having trouble controlling ourselves. If the problem continues, a pattern of abuse starts to develop in our own households. It is commonly observed among parents that practically all parents get frustrated because raising children takes a lot of our time and energy. Parenting is even harder when we have problems in our lives, such as worries about our jobs, our bills, our relationships with our spouses or community, or problems with alcohol or drugs or gambling. To be good parents, we have to be good examples to our children. Usually, we are apt to forget that children watch examples better than they listen to our preaching.

As parents we have an enormous effect on our children's personalities. If we are warm, giving, and even-tempered, our children will more likely grow up warm, giving, and even-tempered. If we want to help our children feel good about themselves and their own identity, we need to start with ourselves. Our children pick up important messages about love, self-esteem, and self respect from how we act and express our love to them and to other members of our family and community. We need to build ours and their self-esteem by appreciating the things we do and the things our children do. We need to understand how we feel about ourselves and how they feel about themselves by accepting and respecting ourselves and our children for the individuals we all are. We need to show our children that we love them and show that we are interested in them. Children measure how much parents love them by how much contact they have with each parent. Contact every day or every week with a parent feels like lots of love. No contact at all feels like having no love at all. We need to have frequent contact with our children -- in person, on the phone, through the mail, through anyway we can. We need to show our love. Everyday, we need to talk our children by saying: "We love you. You are special to us" and give lots of hugs and kisses when they are around. Our children need our presence more than our presents. Our children need to know that our love to them is not based on what they do or do not do. We love them because their very existence is a gift from God.

We need to listen to our children when they talk to us. It is evident that loving our children is easy; but talking to them is sometimes hard. However, listening to our children tells us that we think they are important and that we are interested in what they have to say. As someone said, “We spend, on average, ten hours per week shopping or gossiping, but only 30 minutes talking or playing with our children.” We need to spend time with our children doing things together, like reading, walking, playing ball, and cleaning the house. What children want most is our attention. If they show bad behavior, it is usually their way of getting our attention. We need to show them that we have confidence in them and tell them that their thoughts and feelings matter a lot to us. If we believe in them, they are more likely to believe in themselves and us. We need to spend time with our children and take time to evaluate and understand our relationships with our children and to seek help from our scholars and elders of our communities. In addition, most of us want our children to grow up with children whose families are often much like their own, the Eritrean families in the Eritrean communities, in order to preserve the legacy of their cultural heritage and cherish their ethnic identity. Thank you.