Leading children through examples.

Parents and leaders, what is the difference? Well, parents are leaders too.

Political leaders are the guardians of a nation. Their vision and the path they lead their people may take them to a better developed nation or a nation constantly beleaguered by endless problems.

That is the reason why we must choose our leaders carefully, otherwise we may be getting leaders in the habit of looking more after themselves and their communities than for the whole nation. They are similar to parents who are partial to some of their own children, neglecting a number of them for one reason or another.

Parents can lead their family to success and happiness or to a life of unending problems due to the poor attitudes, wrong behaviours and undesirable actions.

Sometimes, it is difficult to overcome poor attitudes, and undesirable behaviours and actions. Such parents had learnt or imitated them from their own parents. Schools do not seem to be able to do much nowadays, although educationists(?) did introduce religious teachings and moral education into schools. Preaching and teaching alone cannot do much to change pupils. There must be examples, in the form of stories, news items and living examples.

Parents are the first living examples for children. If they have weaknesses, then they must be aware of their own weaknesses. Only when someone is aware of weaknesses can that someone try to overcome them through the many ways available. (I myself have physical weaknesses that I was aware of at a very young age, and through that awareness, I searched for ways to overcome them, found those and acted on them to be the present healthy me.)

Parents can use the influence of good relatives, friends and neighbours. They could use everyday news of successful people. Do not just know of such stories. Tell the children about such people. Let them be inspired by such God-send individuals. For example, I tell almost everyone I met about the fantastic lady who lost her two hands and legs, yet is today better and more able than most people we all know. The wonderful lady, if you have read about her in this blog or in last month's Reader Digest, is none other than Daniela Garcia. What a lady!

When people my age were in school we had no moral lessons but we had literature when we had the beautiful opportunity to read about 'The mouse and the lion.', 'Jack and the beanstalk.' and 'The rabbit and the tortoise.'.

Those stories were fun to read, taking us to fantasy land and getting our young little hearts to admire the good deed of the mouse which deserved another good deed from the lion. And the beautiful part of it is the revelation of human character in real life through such fantasies.

In the 'Rabbit and the tortoise' story, we learn to not underestimate another person, not to scorn another just because he seemed to be handicapped. He might just have certain talents the able-bodied ones do not possess or does not have the need to discover. Anyway, through such stories I learned about life and fellow humans and my present position in life is an indication that I am not far from right as I have almost everything I want.

Educationists should perhaps take another look at the methods used today and consider the ideas of those perhaps not as well-educated educationists of the old days. Ego may be a stumbling block but I can tell you nuggets of knowledge, unlike you and me, do not age.

For the sake of our children, parents must continuously improve to be able to bring up the best.