On Children

  

On Children

Points …

The Prophet tells the parents, “Your children are not your children”. They come through the parents, but not from the parents. Parents can give their love, but not their thoughts. Children have their own thoughts. Their souls dwell in the houses of tomorrow.

Parents are the bows, children are the arrows. The archer or the God bends the bows. Then arrows can fly swift and far. Parents have to encourage and support children. The God loves both the bending of the parents and the flying arrows.

‘Explain the views of the prophet on children and parents in the poem ‘On Children’.

According to the Prophet, a child is a gift from the abundance of existence and it is eternal life itself. Children are born as sons and daughters as ‘life’s longing for itself’. Parents do not create them and hence cannot possess them. Parents serve as a ‘passage’ or vehicle to bring the children to this world. Further, children have their own thoughts because they have the free will to do as they please.

Whereas parents belong to the yesterdays, their children belong to the future. The children will have their own personality. Hence parents should only give them as much Love as they can and not their thoughts. Parents  should let their children grow according to their own potential.

Gibran uses the metaphor of archer-bow-and-arrows to explain the role of parents in bringing up children. In this metaphor, God is the archer, the parents represent the bow, and the children are the living arrows. Like an archer, God bends the bows testing them for stability to aid the arrows as they try to reach their destination. It is the archer who decides the target, which is marked upon the path of the infinite, and He bends the parents (bows) with his might that His arrows may go swift and far”.