Bringing up children is a matter of the greatest importance and difficulty. It is important because a sound upbringing helps build a committed and faithful generation, and it is difficult because upbringing requires awareness, culture and knowledge of its principles and rules, while parents need a better understanding of children's thinking, their inclinations and their various needs. Some parents fall into a grave error when they meet children's material needs and neglect their spiritual and moral ones.<\/p>\n
There is another matter: many fathers and mothers do not feel the need for an educational culture to help them bring up and teach their children, which makes them fall into grave errors through a lack of deep understanding of the means of upbringing. To avoid this, fathers and mothers should acquire a good grasp of the correct means of bringing up children, which in turn calls for reading books on upbringing, drawing on the experience of scholars and reformers in the field, and keeping up with everything new in the world of childhood, so that children can be raised according to sound educational principles.<\/p>\n
The importance of bringing children up correctly stems from the fact that childhood is the stage at which personality is formed, while youth is the stage at which it is fixed. A person's character is formed in the first years of life, and the effects of childhood continue to be reflected in their behaviour and conduct even after they have passed beyond that important stage of their life.<\/p>\n
On that basis, taking up the responsibility of bringing up children is one of the most important responsibilities resting on parents. Upbringing is a natural right of children over their parents, and they are in urgent need of it in order to build their personalities and refine their souls so that they become individuals of benefit to their faith and their society.<\/p>\n
The best methods of bringing up children<\/p>\n
For a sound upbringing of children, the following methods should be followed:<\/p>\n
1. Planting religious and moral values in the child's character:<\/p>\n
It is extremely important in bringing up children to plant religious and moral values in their characters, by explaining religious matters simply so that children can grasp them. It is also essential to bring children up on noble morals and good manners so that a religious and well-mannered generation can be raised.<\/p>\n
Because religion is the source of moral virtues and high human values, we must plant religion in our children's souls and make them proud to belong to it and feel love towards everything connected with it.<\/p>\n
In order to plant religion in children's souls they should be taken to places of worship and remembrance and to centres of culture and thought, and guided towards observing religious values and teachings from an early age. It is related that the Prophet said: \"Teach your children to pray when they reach seven, discipline them over it when they reach ten, and separate their sleeping places\" (1), so that religious duties are observed from childhood and the child grows up with them by the time they reach the age of religious responsibility.<\/p>\n
Teaching a child to pray and to fast, and bringing them up on noble manners and morals from an early age, is the best method of refining their soul, purifying their spirit and building their character.<\/p>\n
2. Accustoming the child to good habits:<\/p>\n
A child should be accustomed to good habits so that they become part of their general character. Good habits are many: keeping to appointments, greeting others, respecting elders, truthfulness in speech, attention to cleanliness, and getting used to reading and study, and so on.<\/p>\n
Accustoming a child to good habits makes them keep to those habits even when grown, for it is hard for a person to abandon any habit acquired in earliest childhood, and this gives them a respected and successful character when they become a young adult. But when a child becomes accustomed to bad habits, they grow up with them and they become part of their character, which leads them to failure and perhaps to misery and hardship in life.<\/p>\n
3. Nourishing the child with love, kindness and affection:<\/p>\n
A child needs love, kindness and affection from their parents as much as they need food and drink. Emotional nourishment, love, kindness and affection, is essential for building a sound character free of disturbance and anxiety. A child who receives love, kindness and affection feels at ease and integrated in character, whereas one who is deprived of love and kindness develops serious psychological complexes.<\/p>\n
The Messenger of God said: \"Love children and be merciful to them\" (2), and also: \"Whoever kisses his child, God Almighty records a good deed for him, and whoever brings him joy, God will bring him joy on the Day of Resurrection\" (3). With these teachings our Prophet urges us to nourish the child with love, kindness and affection, because the absence of this leads to psychological problems in the child's character.<\/p>\n
\"Psychological research has established that one of the most important causes of anxiety is the absence of emotional warmth in the family and the child's feeling of being rejected, deprived of love, kindness and affection, and of being a weak creature living in the midst of a hostile world\" (4).<\/p>\n
One psychological study found that 91% of offenders had suffered from a lack of love and kindness.<\/p>\n
This shows how important it is to provide children with love, kindness and affection, since this has a profound effect on the integration of the child's character, on increasing self-confidence, on the opening and growth of mental abilities, on creating balance in the child's psyche and on the stability of their moral state.<\/p>\n
While love and kindness are essential to the growth of a child's spirit and the integration of their character, excess of them does the child much harm: chief among these harms are excessive self-admiration, a growing state of conceit, an inability to bear responsibility, and unbecoming and unserious behaviour, and so on.<\/p>\n
What is required is balance in love, kindness and affection: a deficiency in nourishing the child with them is as harmful to their character as an excess. Nothing helps achieve a balanced upbringing in a child's life like moderation in love, kindness and affection.<\/p>\n
4. Avoiding severe harshness and excessive leniency:<\/p>\n
A sound upbringing requires a fine balance in dealing with children. Severe harshness towards children, like excessive leniency, does grave harm to their future and to the building of their characters.<\/p>\n
\"Statistics have shown that a large number of offenders come from homes in which harshness was the law applied and beating and inflicting harm were the means of upbringing\" (5).<\/p>\n
Repression is not the right way to bring up a child; it stirs anxiety in the child's soul, which is among the harshest forms of inner conflict. Punishing a child does not, for the most part, correct their behaviour, but rather causes grave harm.<\/p>\n
The best means of bringing up a child is a refined and calm upbringing, which serves their physical and mental health (6). It is also essential to avoid excessive leniency, which is no less dangerous than severe harshness, since it raises the child to feel no sense of responsibility, to observe no rules or moral or value-based standards, to disregard the rights of others, and to be weak in self-reliance.<\/p>\n
As for severe harshness, its dangers are plain: it leads the child to behave roughly and coarsely, to develop illnesses and psychological complexes, and may even lead to the committing of criminal acts.<\/p>\n
The best means of a sound upbringing is an upbringing on the rule of \"firmness with gentleness\".<\/p>\n
5. Respecting the child's personality:<\/p>\n
Respecting a child's personality instils in them self-confidence and a sense of ease and develops their leadership talents, whereas treating a child dismissively, belittling their standing and regarding them as merely ignorant and understanding nothing, leads the child to psychological complexes, to disturbance and anxiety, and to feelings of deficiency and inferiority.<\/p>\n
One of the important methods in upbringing is to deal with the child as a human being with feelings, emotions and sensations, and therefore the child's personality must be respected, because this helps shape their character in the future. Dealing with a child without any regard for their feelings and emotions produces children who are psychologically and mentally troubled and disturbed, and this carries grave dangers for the children themselves and for society as well.<\/p>\n
6. Following the principle of reward and punishment:<\/p>\n
One of the elements of a sound upbringing is following the principle of reward and punishment, or rather the principle of encouragement and reproof. If a child does well, achieves a good level in their school results or speaks in a good manner, they should be rewarded and encouraged for it. But if they do wrong to themselves or to others, fail in their studies or behave without manners or morals, they should be reproved and punished in a reasonable way so that they are deterred from repeating that wrong act.<\/p>\n
The principle of reward and punishment is one accepted by all people of reason, as it is by educationalists. It is not right that the one who does well and the one who does wrong should be treated alike: the one who does well should be rewarded and encouraged for doing well, and the one who does wrong should be punished and reproved for it. This principle is very important in bringing up children, so that the one who does well does more good and the one who does wrong is deterred from their acts.<\/p>\n
7. Justice between children:<\/p>\n
One of the most important foundations of a sound upbringing is justice between children and not favouring some over others, because that leads to resentment and rancour among them.<\/p>\n
It is related that the Prophet said: \"Fear God and be just between your children, as you would wish them to be dutiful to you\" (7). Imam Ali said: the Messenger of God saw a man with two children who kissed one of them and left the other, and said: \"Why did you not treat them equally?\" (8). Justice between children is very important in building the fabric of the family and in creating an atmosphere of cooperation and understanding among them. Favouring some over others without any reasonable cause, and openly and plainly, destroys the family, creates rancour and resentment among the children and removes understanding and cooperation between them, and all of this has grave consequences for the future of the family and leads to the break-up of the family order.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u062a\u0639\u062f \u062a\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0637\u0641\u0627\u0644 \u0645\u0633\u0623\u0644\u0629 \u0641\u064a \u063a\u0627\u064a\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0647\u0645\u064a\u0629 \u0648\u0627\u0644\u0635\u0639\u0648\u0628\u0629 \u060c \u0641\u0647\u064a \u0645\u0647\u0645\u0629 \u062c\u062f\u0627\u064b \u0644\u0623\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u062a\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0633\u0644\u064a\u0645\u0629 \u062a\u0633\u0627\u0647\u0645 \u0641\u064a \u0628\u0646\u0627\u0621 \u062c\u064a\u0644 \u0645\u0644\u062a\u0632\u0645 \u0648\u0645\u0624\u0645\u0646 \u060c \u0648\u0647\u064a \u0635\u0639\u0628\u0629 \u0644\u0623\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u062a\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629 \u0628\u062d\u0627\u062c\u0629 \u0625\u0644\u0649 \u0648\u0639\u064a \u0648\u062b\u0642\u0627\u0641\u0629 \u0648\u0639\u0644\u0645 \u0628\u0623\u0635\u0648\u0644 \u0627\u0644\u062a\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629 \u0648 \u0642\u0648\u0627\u0639\u062f\u0647\u0627 \u060c \u0643\u0645\u0627 \u0623\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0622\u0628\u0640\u0627\u0621 \u0628\u062d\u0627\u062c\u0629 \u0625\u0644\u0649 \u0641\u0647\u0645 \u0623\u0641\u0636\u0644 \u0644\u062a\u0641\u0643\u064a\u0631 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0637\u0641\u0627\u0644 \u0648\u0645\u064a\u0648\u0644\u0647\u0645 \u0648\u062d\u0627\u062c\u0627\u062a\u0647\u0645 \u0627\u0644\u0645\u062a\u0646\u0648\u0639\u0629 \u060c \u0648\u064a\u0642\u0639 \u0628\u0639\u0636 \u0627\u0644\u0622\u0628\u0627\u0621 \u0641\u064a \u062e\u0637\u0623 \u0641\u0627\u062d\u0634 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pcdcr.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}