In his autobiographical novel The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini beautifully expresses the realization of a parent’s imprint. Amir and his father (whom he calls Baba) left Afghanistan a quarter of a century earlier when Amir was barely in his teens and moved to California. When Baba dies of cancer, members of the Muslim community come to the mosque to pay their respects. They tell Amir how much they appreciated his father and how deeply he influenced their lives.
I smiled politely, thanked them for their wishes, listened to whatever they had to say about Baba.
“…helped me build the house in Taimani…”
“…bless him…”
“…no one else to turn to and he lent me…”
“…like a brother to me…”
Listening to them, I realized how much of who I was, what I was, had been defined by Baba and the marks he had left on people’s lives. My whole life, I had been “Baba’s son.” Now he was gone. Baba couldn’t show me the way anymore; I’d have to find it on my own.2
An effective parent-child relationship is grounded in the awareness of the outside influences that our children receive. Consider some of those powerful pressures such as television, music, videos, movies, and the Internet—all those media can send good messages, but they can also send harmful messages to our young people. Let’s ask ourselves, “How can we move back to the way things were twenty years ago when the primary motivators for our children were family, the church, and school?”
There is no simple, easy answer, but we can get back to soundly proven family values. Pulling our children into the safety of the family must be the cornerstone of our parental influence.
I frequently tell my students as well as my own daughter: “You want a good picture of yourself? The best way to do that is to look at your friends. Simply look into their eyes. Listen to the way they talk. Look at the type of friends you have and the people you want to be around. Think about the things they do and you’ll understand the type of person you are.”
My point is this: Good people have good friends. If the family is healthy, they’ll help you attract the right kind of friends. That’s another one of the things good parents do—guide their children’s choice of friends.
When we examine the matter of parental impact, we must ensure that we give our children wise advice and encourage them to have the right kind of friends. I say the same thing to parents that I say to the children in our school: “You want a good picture of yourself? Look at your friends. Are the colleagues you bring to your home the type of people you want your children to see as role models? Are your friends the kind of people you want your children to be around, to follow, and to imitate? If you bring the wrong kind of friends around, you are saying to your children, ‘Who you associate with doesn’t matter.’”
It does matter. We become like the people we’re around the most. An excellent example is to look at smoking in the home. Even first-grade children know that smoking isn’t healthy. If their parents smoke, even though they know the dangers, children will have a tendency to smoke as well. By the time they’re in middle school, their friends influence them. If their friends smoke—no matter how much they’ve been taught verbally that smoking is an addictive habit—they will likely become smokers. Friends matter. Friends shape our behavior. The role models our friends have at home not only shape their behavior, but affect us as well, since the influence of these role models filters through our friends and reaches us.
I’ve struggled to convince my daughter that she watches too much television. By being aware of her TV habits, I’ve been forced to scrutinize my own bad habit of watching so much television. Although most of what I watch is either news or sports, I’m still her role model. If I’m going to have a positive influence on her TV habits, I need to demonstrate the right behavior as well as talk about it.
If parents lovingly guide their children’s selection of friends, they can save disappointment and heartaches later. If they are healthy role models and their friends are also good role models, they will strongly impact their children’s outcome in life.
As parents, we need to teach these lessons early. Think of it this way: Every teacher is not a parent, but every parent is a teacher. The parent is the first teacher every child encounters. The first classroom a child will ever sit in is the mother’s womb. We must understand the power of early environments. Children require advice and examples from parents on how to relate to others. They learn from observing the way adults behave when parents don’t know they’re being watched. Children learn from us how to interact properly with other males and females. As parents, we will teach our children, whether or not we’re aware. Our examples teach them about male-female interaction. They’ll learn about our values and attitudes from our actions, even more so than from our words. We set the pattern for them. This places a strong responsibility on us and forces us to realize the significance of our role as parent-teachers.
Children can learn so much from their fathers. Specifically, they observe the way men treat and respect the women in their lives. This is perhaps one of the most important lessons that fathers teach, though we don’t seem to emphasize its impact. If the boys see disrespect, that’s the pattern the boys will follow. If the girls see it, that’s the pattern of behavior they will expect. As Henry Ward Beecher said more than a century ago, “The best way to love your children is to love their mother.”
We need to teach young people that violence is always wrong. Think about how O. J. Simpson’s life would be different had he mastered that lesson early on as a young man. The same is true if we examine the life of the boxer Mike Tyson or the professional basketball player Kobe Bryant. In their court cases, both men denied they had sexually abused women, but they never disputed they had been violent with women. All three men, who were fathers and husbands, might have led different personal lives if they had learned early on that violence is never an option.
We can start turning our children against violence by teaching them about fairness. Life isn’t always equitable, but they should learn always to be fair even if others don’t treat them the same way.
When I began to write this book, my older daughter, Macawi, was four years old. Almost from the time she was born, I began to talk to her about being fair, showing respect, and being humble. One time I tried to explain about being humble. We talked about a situation and I asked, “Is it all about you?”
“No, it’s not all about me, it’s about you, Daddy.”
“No, it’s not about me either,” I said.
She tried to figure out the right answer, but she still didn’t have it. I wanted her to learn about the importance of improving the world, about making a difference in the lives of others, and about encouraging and empowering others. We live in such a “me-centered society” and it poisons our kids. We need to reverse that and change the world we live in. We must help our children learn to give themselves to a life of service. People who do only for themselves just make it in life; those who do for others get ahead!
“Do something for somebody every day for which you do not get paid.” Those are the words of Albert Schweitzer.
“The more I help others to succeed, the more I succeed,” said Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s.
Those are two of my favorite quotations because they underscore the essence of service.
We have to “be there for our children.” I hear that expression often, but I’m not sure most parents understand the true meaning of these words. In order to “be there” for our children, we need to be there. Being physically present and preoccupied with work or other problems isn’t being there for them. Being present means to be available—listening, teaching, role-modeling, or having time for them to simply come and sit in our laps. That’s being there. It’s never too early to talk to