Every day, on the train rides to work, i witness various interesting scenarios.
It is extremely amusing to observe the antics some perfectly healthy and able-bodied
commuters display in order to avoid giving up their seats to those who truly need them.
I get especially angry when parents with children of school-going age tell their kids
to rush for vacant seats instead of giving them up to senior citizens standing near them.
Do these parents even realise what sort of values they are imparting and what kind of
children they are bringing up?
Earlier this week, my sister told me that she overheard a conversation between a mother
and her son on her way to work one morning. Apparently, the boy's mother had told
his teacher that he was always sleepy in class because he has had to stand all the way
on train rides to school, and no one bothered enough to give up their seats to him.
Wow. Speechless.
This got me thinking about how difficult it is nowadays to bring up children and to nurture
them into balanced, logical-thinking beings with a good sense of what is right and wrong.
I feel a lot of contempt for parents who teach (directly!) their children
or demonstrate (indirectly!) to them how to disregard the needs of others in the very
environment they live in. However, on the other hand, i realise how a child would be
extremely disadvantaged should he/she be taught to give way to others all the time
without discerning if these other people truly deserved or needed to be given way to.
How do you strike a balance between the two in order to nurture a child into a
compassionate person who is still able to stand up for himself/herself when necessary?
And what if you are a parent who does not have such qualities yourself?
I have no answers.
