Do your best as parents

Sita Namaratne

VIEW: I totally agree with Dr. Keerthi Jayasekera’s views on “Right to Die” that appeared in the Daily News paper recently. Let me express my genuine views about this matter. I am a mother of three daughters. So, I know how parents feel about their children.

It’s no exaggeration if I mention that the parents go through many hardships and difficult situations when bringing up the children.

Especially at a time like now, if both parents are employed, it’s very difficult to find a person to take care of the children. This is how the life cycle goes.

Recently, I got an e-mail message which has been circulated among my local and overseas friends.

The summary of the e-mail is a father telling his son how he managed to bring up his son in the mid of many difficulties and requesting his son to take care of his old aged life. In another e-mail I can still recall, a mother says to her daughter that she needs more care and attention from her daughter as she did the same thing when her daughter was a child.

This seems to me that the parents are trying to get back of what they have done to their children. Sri Lanka is known as a country where its culture and tradition are still protected well.

If we think about the culture in European countries, the “bond” between parents and children is not great like ours.

In some countries, when the children turn eighteen or nineteen they are considered to be adults and will be totally kept out of the supervision of the parents.

They start their own life and parents spend their own. When the parents become old, they prefer to be alone and on a Mothers’ day or Fathers’ day or on their birthdays the children visit them. In Sri Lanka, the matter is different. The parents live with their children or with one child until they die.

Some parents would not allow their children to go to foreign countries to study or for employment. I would not criticise this as this shows how great their love is.

It’s their responsibility to take care of them and supervise them until they manage to live on their own and to decide what to do and what not to do.

If we have done our duty well, they will become useful and educated people to the society.( I would highlight that there could be few instances that we see kids go astray without any visible reason.) When they are adults and married, we have to let them live their own lives. Some parents interfere in their lives and make the problems worse.

We must stop disturbing them as they are married and allow them to make their own decisions. Here there is a duty to be fulfilled from children’s side too. When they are married, they should let their parents to spend their lives freely and with more relaxation.

They should not seek their parents’ assistance to look after the grandchildren.

Some parents, even if they are very old and weak, they go and take care of the grandchildren as there is no other option. The children have to plan and organize some ways to take care of their kids without disturbing the relaxation the parents need when they are old.

The parents must realise that the children are married and they have their own lives. They might need to go overseas for their higher studies or employment.

They would not be able to get this opportunity again. So, the parents have to keep in their minds that when the children are grown up they should not expect them to pay back what the parents have done to them. It’s our fate if we are destined to be in bed in the old age and suffer alone.

This does not mean that there is no love or bond between parents and children. In this competitive world which is rapidly advancing, the children will have to go along with the trend and make their lives better. As a result, there are unavoidable circumstances and the children would not be able to stick to the parents at every minute. We should make up our minds when the children are married or no more with us.

It’s not fair if the parents blame the children for not looking after them. If the children are raised carefully and well, they would do their best to look after the parents in the old age.

I would quote the Buddha’s words

“Manopubbanga Ma dhamma- Manosetta manomaya
Manasache paduttena-Bhasathiva karothiva...........
Thathonan Dukka man vethi - Chakkanva Wahatho padan”