Child

Make the Child Understand Prejudice

Parents should not keep making the mistake. as many do across the world, of infecting their own children with the disease of prejudice from false ethnic pride. The disease spits out the poison of aversion or disdain or worse. contempt for groups or communities of people only for the reason that they are "different" and "not of us" in race. Culture, colour or faith.

Parents often groom their children into seeking a refuge or a sense of security against the people they had not known or even met. by looking down on them wit~ an uneasy dislike because of fear or mistrust of them arising from the mere fact that they are perceived "different".

Parents do so unwittingly by being themselves vocal and liberal in expressing their sweeping prejudice in the presence of their children. The children trust their parents and accept their views. however preposterous or generalised, as well-based and true. What is worse, children take it as normal to harbour and peddle such lines of prejudice.

People with such mental weaknesses are known as "stereotypes" and are a threat to "islaah" (concord) so earnestly exhorted by Islam for the well-being of the human society. In the present world which is now mere one global village. there is no room for the people who are stereotypes or the children who are reared as such.

Who Is A Stereotype ?

A person who holds a false and prejudiced opinion about the entire community of people whom he perceives as "different" and because of his unpleasant experience. however isolated, with a member or two individually of that community. Or the false opinion held was predetermined because it was also held by others of his own kind.

The disease is infectious where ego and self-aggrandizement from stark ignorance abound. A stereotype will twist, distort, misinterpret or even ignore the hard facts or glaring truth simply because they conflict with his "cherished opinions" which never had any valid basis in the first place.

At the slightest opportunity, he is ready to make a quantum leap into a whimsical conclusion to comfort him in his prejudiced views. It is a disease of attitude (mind) which is often infected to the children by their parents, who themselves were also made victims during their childhood. Once infected a remedy or remission is difficult where ignorance is perpetuated as a heavenly inspiration.

In a society of Muslims the presence of stereotypes should be uncommon. The stereotypes cannot hold and portray compassion for all mankind in common, while Islam, in a nutshell, is "Serving the Creator and showing compassion for His creatures. (Hadith).

Islam esteems the whole mankind as one people with no distinction with regard to race, tribe or colour. It has however set one distinction, a spiritual one, transcending all others and that is: those who are dutiful to Allah are the ones who are honourable in the sight of Allah. (Verse 49: 13).

Stereotypes are prone to stooping further for an added comfort of their weakness. They will be seen peddling supposedly "a righteous hate", again with no valid basis for it. Hate is even worse than prejudice. A child let toying with a prejudice to grow into hate is like letting him have a pet who grows into a monster, who later in life can- not be controlled, caged or made to disappear.

And There Was This Child... There was this small child with her maid seated in a public garden. She was deriving fun by engaging her maid in a game of teasing her sense of concern for the child.

She would wander off away from her to prompt the maid to plead to her to come back. When the maid makes a move to stand up to go after her she would sprint back and cling to her with her small arms around the maid's neck, and cheeks pressed hard against each other's to assure the maid that she is back safe. At times, the child would fondle the maid's ears or play with the maid's hair with her small hands in instinctive human attachment. It never dawns upon the child that they both are "different" in race and colour from one another.

Such a behaviour of a child is always a manifestation of the inherent human nature free of contrasting behavioural traits which are acquired later. The holy Qur'an is eloquent regarding this basic human nature of commonalty by saying that all human- beings are one single people (verse 5:48), with a common dignity to all mankind (verse 17:70). Any prejudice with regard to the fact that people though one, are not one single "Ummah" (nation), is to question the Creator's wisdom (11: 118).

Discourse and discussion of the subject mentioned in the verses with children at home at opportune moments are remarkably effective. Apart from other considerations, children will be saved from the unworthy emotions and their consequent effects on their mental and physical health. What is more, they as adults will understand well the weaknesses of other stereotypes and forgive when or if they them- selves are the victims of prejudice or hate.

Handle the Child's Fragile Trust with Care

When this person was about four years old. his mother took him shopping with her. He wanted to be a "Big Boy" so she gave him the money for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. She placed a shilling in his right hand and said. "This is for the bread," then a shilling in his left hand and said. "This is for the milk." He ran happily into the store.

After about ten minutes his mother got worried and came into the store to find her child in tears because he couldn't remember which shilling was for the milk and which for the bread. "Oh darling! It didn't matter! The price is the same." the mother laughed with great amusement.

The child didn't find it funny. The mother should have simply explained to the child that one shilling was for milk and one for bread? The child saw himself rudely cheated in return for having trusted the mother unquestionably. He tried to remember and follow, her instructions precisely having been made to believe that the shilling for bread was different from the shilling for milk!

It is not surprising that after some sixty years the child, now an aged person. cannot wipe off from the memory this incident, which appeared petty to the parent, but emotionally up-setting for any child. Ripple Effects.

This father urges his child to join him in the swimming pool for the child's first experience in the mass of water assuring him that he is safe in his father's hands. The child eventually yields and joins only to find that the father was scaring him to death with the theatrics (pretense) of drowning him. It was a great fun to the father worth joking about when he is back at home. However, to the child it was a rude violation of his trust in the parent. The memory of the experience and the embarrassment of the spectacle he had created in public would linger on.

The erosion of a child's trust in parents produces ripple effects in significant degrees in his love, loyalty and obedience for the parents over a period of time. These are apart from other emotional aspects of his relation to them if his trust is misused or made fun of more as a practice than a rare exception.

I was in the reception room of a dental clinic waiting for dental attention. Seated opposite me at the other side of the wall, among other patients, was an elderly lady ! with a small boy who appeared to be her grandchild.

Strangely the child seemed to be taking undue interest in me with his large inquiring eyes. After some time, seeing his interest yet undiminished, I directed to him a sign . of "come over and say hello" as if to break the proverbial ice. I had thought that with that signal the scrutiny by the vigilant child would cease. Say Hello.

Apparently, the gesture did not escape the sharp eyes of the grandmother. She asked the child who was all the time standing by her side, to go over and say hello to "uncle" and then showed visible anger and embarrassment when he would not budge despite her repeated prodding. Her sense of granny pride for the child's obedience was being publicly challenged. Seeing that I brought on myself anew and bigger situation I had not bargained for, I intervened.

I spoke up to the lady in the presence of all who were stealthily playing spectators to the small drama, presumably to kill the boredom or divert their mind from the dread that lay ahead in the dentist's chair. I assured the grandmother that the behaviour of the child was perfectly natural.

He being on guard would not want to approach someone who was a stranger not only to him but also to her; and that would come only from a child who was alert and healthy in mind. Being alert must not be misconstrued as being shy.

Self-preservation.

The child obviously trusted his grandmother, but then he trusted his strong sense of self-preservation even more. Children's nature is to be wary of strangers and this serves as an instinctive protection for the children who are vulnerable because of their age. Parents should not teach their children to compromise their instinctive shield which is useful when they are individually alone outside their home.

The lion cub raised as a pet and taught to trust human-beings with the instinct of self- preservation seriously compromised is never let back into the wild jungle. In the same context, parents should leave the child's strong sense of self-preservation intact.

They should not use his trust in them to disturb his inherent natural behaviour of being wary of strangers.

In fact, the parents' fulfilment of one important of love of love for their child is the ability to retain the child's trust in them. It may not be as simple as said. No wonder, marriage and the upbringing of children in the home require as well-trained a mind and as well disciplined a character as any other occupation that might be considered a career! It seems as if parents have to go a school to graduate in childrens up-bringing, such important is this subject in the human life!