Kourosh Ziabari – Medium: April is a month in which children have many reasons to celebrate and many reasons to expect to be listened to, taken care of and treated more respectfully, fondly and amicably.
April 2, which was last Monday, marks the International Children’s Book Day, which is an International Observance. Then many countries such as Bolivia, Haiti, Zambia, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Palestine and Hong Kong, Taiwan mark national Children’s Day to celebrate children and discuss the important things that relate to their welfare and wellbeing, mental and physical health, and raise public awareness of their needs, including the need for a robust, frank and unaltered dialogue between children and their parents without any barriers.
Children of 2018 are the decision-makers of 2048 and the years following it. Even in their daily interactions and in their quest to learn certain basics, including how to open the apartment’s door with a key or how to turn the stove on — against which they should be warned cautiously as tinkering with stove and cooking utensils are the last things toddlers and even teenagers should be encouraged to do!, they show unusual levels of curiosity, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Curiosity which leads to productive learning should be preserved.
They sometimes ask questions that we, as parents, find ourselves unable to answer compellingly. Or sometimes we find their questions inappropriate and remind ourselves that this certain question should be put on hold and “we will be able to talk about it in a week or so”. However, it’s with this curiosity that children grow up and find ways of life. In my early childhood, when I opened my eyes to rooms full of papers, magazines and newspapers, which were literally the home-built newspaper office of my journalist parents, I took an involuntary journey to journalism. It was the magnet and attraction of their job that drew me to this profession plus certain degrees of imposition.
When I decided at the age of 8, to become a journalist, and started by contributing op-ed pieces to local weekly magazines in my hometown of Rasht, I had no idea I would one day end up writing for The Huffington Post, Fair Observer, International Policy Digest, Al-Arabiya, openDemocracy and be featured by BBC World, Le Monde Diplomatique and Der Spiegel. Although I should confess that journalism consumed me and on a couple of reporting missions, I survived death, in addition to surviving other horrible things, and was never recognized the way I expected or deserved, for my day and night efforts, having worked like a soldier and a bricklayer, putting words next to each other, producing work of un-plagiarised, original journalism and never received any “well done!” by somebody who means when he says “well done” and whose “well done” Is of some value, I think the whole journey was worth it.
At any rate, I had to always bear in mind that the setting I worked in as a journalist is not reputed to have good relationships with journalists, and the culture of reading and reading critically is yet to be established in my country.
International Children’s Book Day is an opportunity for us the parents to find the relevant, proper and attractive books that our children need to read. We shouldn’t force them to scrap their play time in the yards or gardens with their fellows to read books that they might not really relate to or enjoy. However, it’s an opportunity for us to familiarise our future decision-makers and world leaders with the value of reading and learning through books that are written to inform, educate and enlighten: not necessarily sermons or books of boring poetry by a classic scholar of 14th century; books as popular as Harry Potter series!
And these national children days are also opportunities for us to think about our plans for our children. An effort to set plans and prepare our children for taking up big responsibilities in the future or thinking systematically about their future plans doesn’t mean to intervene prematurely to accelerate their growth or deprive them of the happiness and joviality of these brilliant years, when they are five or five or six, enjoying football with their peers in a yard or park or greenspace. It means coming to know where we should direct our children to so that they’re aware, unconsciously, that their future is going to be one of big opportunities, ups and down, decisions that they should take wisely in order to be able to succeed and emerge victorious, even when they face difficult questions to answer or dilemmas to move behind. We should tell our children that orientation on goals is the key to their success and for this purpose, parents are always available to help “unassumingly”.
All these national children days tell me that a simple cold or flu or two minutes of coughing don’t need to be treated with a bulk of unnecessary chemicals that we should add to the body of our child frantically as soon as we notice him or her coughing or sneezing or feeling a bit unwell; rather, the solution is to encourage him or her to put on a warmer layer of winter cloth, a sweater or a jacket maybe.
All these national children days tell me that to be a good father, I should take time to play games with my daughter, draw pictures for her whenever she asks me, take time to play the games she is interested in and be available as much as I can so that she doesn’t feel there’s a gap separating us, including an age gap or a gap in understanding.
Being a parent is really difficult because it’s sometimes really difficult to understand the language of children. But when you master their language, then things become more relaxed and easily-accessible. The only tricky part of the task is to understand what the child expects of you and to demonstrate to yourself, in all honesty, that your expectations are also realistic. This is where effective parents-children relationship emerge and the national days celebrating and recognising children become meaningful and becoming.
This article was originally published on Medium.