Everyone’s life is greatly influenced by their parents as they are the greatest educators to them. I completely agree that parents are the best teachers and with relevant illustrations, I will explain why in the following article. To begin with, children from an early age start absorbing key communication skills with their parents. They are practically the students’ first teachers, educating them on the principles of morality, love, and affection. Their family’s environment plays a major role in establishing a child’s habits and behaviours. If parents provide a good environment, their children will learn to behave appropriately in social situations. In 2020, the British Council conducted a survey that showed that children absorb most of their knowledge from their parents. They have proven that before entering the schooling age, parents are the best teachers for their children, as they are always guiding them. Over and above it, parents never leave their children unsupervised. Their blessings and the direction they need to succeed in life are always with their children. Parents don’t care how old their children are, they teach them life lessons when and where they need them. The newspaper ‘Times of India’ ran an article in which the editor explained that more than eighty per cent of children get their life lessons and learn from their parents rather than educators. Obviously, the first teachers we have in our lives in most cases are our parents. They teach us to walk, to speak, and to have good manners before we reach “the real world.” More than even the professional teachers that we have at school, parents are generally the most involved in the development and education of children. Almost for sure our parents are the best teachers at the beginning of our lives, which actually corresponds to the parents’ role in nature. Parents are most committed and involved in teaching their children; they have a kind of instinct to sacrifice a part of themselves for the betterment of their children. They love us and have great patience while passing down their knowledge to us. They wish us a success and thus will not teach us bad things. And of course, implicit learning occurs when children unconsciously copy some of their parents’ habits and styles of behavior.
“Some parents tend to spare their children from hard working and, to the extreme; some even spoil their children to do everything they want. All these are resulted from parents’ love toward children. But from an objective angle, hardworking is sometimes a necessary step toward success”.
During the second stage of child development, adolescence, parents can still be in the best position to offer advice even though the children might not accept it. In this case, perhaps the child’s friends would be the best teachers. Adolescents are notoriously rebellious in many cultures and may automatically reject any advice from their parents. My first marriage for instance, was solely a matter of doing the opposite when my parents tried to intrude in offering their advice. So in such matters, parents should be much more flexible and be rather the partners with their children. So we can see that being a teacher of growing child become more and more complicated case as the time passes and many parents are simply not able to meet the increased demands. Furthermore, once our parents get older, they become more conservative and cannot always be objective in regard to modern trends and fashions. Thus we need to take their advice with caution during that period. However, some kind of intuition that I believe shared between relatives about what everybody needs and great love that exists in families still makes our parents very good teachers and advisers at any time. I believe that parents are the best teachers because their lessons last forever From the emotional angle, the bond between child and parents are so tight that the parents cannot give a more objective instruction than a schoolteacher can. Some parents tend to spare their children from hard working and, to the extreme; some even spoil their children to do everything they want. All these are resulted from parents’ love toward children. But from an objective angle, hardworking is sometimes a necessary step toward success. Parents should not be blamed for loving their children but such love may become obstacle for objective instruction.
It would be apt to conclude with: parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.
(The author is a teacher with J&K School Education Department. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”.) [email protected]
