Do not destroy your child's character
By the technical supervisor: Shireen Al-Bayari
Nations are built only by strong, serious people with a character able to take decisions. So how can parents raise children with strong characters able to take decisions?
This question leads us to know the three things that weaken character.
1. Excessive spoiling :
A parent sometimes forgets themselves, out of an excess of love for their child, and spoils them in a way that robs them of their character and turns them into a person we cannot rely on.
Spoiling means :
meeting all the child's requests however difficult and at any time, which makes the child feel they are a person whose requests and orders are always granted.
Excessive spoiling therefore means :
1. Weakening the sense of responsibility in the child, because all their requests are granted.
2. The child controlling their parents and their submitting to them.
3. Feelings of conceit and arrogance taking hold in the child, and their repeating the phrase:
(My father never refuses me anything), (My mother never says "no" to me)
4. The child rebelling against their parents' authority and not respecting them or observing their rules.
5. The spoiled child turning into a person unable to adapt socially, because they always expect their friends and peers to respond to their conceit and their demands, which is why we always see them alone and without friends.
2. Excessive harshness:
A parent is mistaken when they believe that through harshness, severity and beating they are raising strong men or strong women.
Because in this case they kill in them the most important points of strength of character, and raise people whose traits are:
1. Fear: the child is in constant fear of their parents, so the relationship between them disappears and their behaviour towards them is affected, so that they keep away from them; if they see them they tremble and flee to their room, and if they pass near them they shake and withdraw.
2. Hesitation: this child loses confidence in themselves and is constantly hesitant, without the ability to take decisions, and this shows clearly in adulthood.
3. Withdrawal and an inability to form relationships with others, so that they become a lonely, shrunken person who has lost the most important traits of strength of character.
3. Excessive overprotection
When God grants parents a single son among a group of daughters, or a single daughter among a group of sons, or when a child is born after a long period of infertility, the mother or father tries to protect this young child in various ways, such as:
preventing them from playing with other children, and if they do play, not letting them fall or be hurt and showing their intense fear for them.
keeping them from getting into trouble, and trying to solve every problem they face.
protecting them from illnesses, bacteria and germs, through excessive sterilising and an excessive concern with health.
And the result is inevitably a child of weak character,
The most important traits of this "little one" are :
- Dependence on others.
- An inability to bear responsibility.
- Fear and hesitation.
- An inability to adapt socially and to form good relationships.
An inability to solve problems.
