Longrangty Longchar
Father’s day, a time to honor all those men who embarked on an adventure called marriage and took on the task of having children and sharing a world with his children and wife. A time to say thank you and pay tribute to the rock of the family.
Fathers have for long been considered as the bread winner of the family and the problem solver facing the family. The role of a father, however, in bringing up the children is very limited. Many have the misconception that children have to be looked after and brought up by the mothers, and so many limit their roles to more ‘important’ matters like work and society, without realising how much it must be affecting the personality and character of their child.
Many Naga fathers have been heard grumbling that their child, after all the years of their upbringing, yet they have grown up to be some spoilt brat or ‘useless oaf’. However, what they have overlooked is that while they have been earning the money to give the best to their child, with the noble thought that providing the best to their child would make them into responsible citizens, somewhere along the line they might have made the mistake of not spending enough time with their child.
Children are human beings, more or less needing human contact and care, and the most that influences them as far as I can understand is the people around them, their parents, brothers, sisters, etc.
Many Naga parents think that giving food, clothing and shelter is the main responsibility of a parent. How wrong they can be. People living in this world can survive without clothes, food and shelter; the best example can be those beggars in the road side who have nothing, but still having a life of their own. The role of a parent is not about making their children look hale and healthy, dress good, and enjoy the modern amenities; that would be very narrow minded indeed. The responsibility goes a bit far beyond, and that is making them responsible citizens with a strong personality, and to do that, parents might as well start spending some healthy time, a time not to cajoling and advising but a time of just having a good time discussing and sharing the thoughts of the child. And that calls for a positive mindset.
Nagas, unfortunately, have a negative mindset about most of the things in life, though they might be meaning to bring about positive change in the things they like. During my higher Secondary days, in Education class, I have read some psychologist saying, “It is easier and better to teach the students to love discipline than to hate indiscipline.” Sadly Nagas take to the wrong method to bring positive outcome. For instance, I have noticed teachers beating undisciplined students to make them disciplined, and beating latecomers to make them punctual. Going by the theory of the psychologist, what the teachers are doing is not making the children to love discipline and punctuality, but simply making them hate indiscipline and unpunctuality, and that is how a negative mindset takes root in a child mind. Very sadly, this instilling of a negative mindset does not date back to the present but goes back a long time when our forefathers were thrashed because of some disrespect to their elders. In fact some first generation Naga scholars who studied during the early days when education was a new thing narrated that seniors used to rag them no end; they were punished for all the small things and they were given the idea that it was for their own good. So punishing a child is for his own good, which is nonsense, and has to be done away with and try to use more positive means like teaching the good outcomes of being a disciplined, obedient or punctual child, which would be very hard indeed, as the teacher must be aware of this but simply not putting this into practice because they have been brought up in the same school where they are teaching.
The same goes with the Church also; I remember revival programmes I attended during my childhood days in my locality, where some women possessed by the ‘Holy Spirit’ would make spine chilling predictions about death and misfortune befalling those who do not change their hearts and turn to God. It was very frightening, and more than once I ‘changed’ my heart and ‘turned’ to God, just because I did not want to die or burn in hell. Looking back I recollect what a fool I was to be carried away by those threatening predictions of the ‘Holy Women’ who put ‘fear’ in my heart, not ‘love’ of God. (I know some people may not like this part, but that’s how I feel). Now, I look at God from a different point of view which is very personal and intimate, and it concerns only me; the guiding force is found in the book of Psalms, “For His mercies endureth forever.” However, the ‘fear’ of God, Hell and His wrath had its toll on me, and I often wonder if I had changed my life for the sake of love and not fear of God. Things would have been different, but I have no regrets, because I have learnt something very important in life, about love.
So parents need to understand that when their children are inside the classrooms, being punished ‘to make them good students’, but which is instilling in them a negative mindset and attitude to the child, they should try to be more sensitive and try to understand the problems that a child faces inside the classrooms and try to make him understand the joy of being disciplined though at the same time teaching him not to hate indiscipline, for loving and hating is a very bad habit which makes a child to either hate or love for the rest of his life.
As for the fathers, they need to shed the camouflage of being artificially strong, cold and insensitive, but try to become close friends with their child. A Chinese saying goes like this, “As your child grows up, treat him like your friend.” So either be your child’s friend or lose him as your child and be a stranger.
Anyway, the times are changing, so is the society. For better or for worse, it is going through a transition; however, it would be very sad indeed if fathers and mothers did not play their roles, or simply confine themselves to the traditional parents’ role of providing food and clothing and tell bedtime stories from the Bible, good stories told not to make them see God’s power but simply to make them fall asleep.
There has to be a change in the father’s role in a family and hopefully, this Fathers Day, as the world pays its tribute to them, may the proud fathers join in and be a part of the family rather than thinking that mothers alone must take care of the family. So the role of the fathers is not only to ‘give’ and provide to their family but also to ‘share’ and ‘mould up’ healthy personalities.
Wishing all Daddies a very Happy Father’s Day!
