Recently, a friend of ours was lamenting on how her son has soon given up being a busboy at the newly opened Mang Inasal just outside our village shortly into his probationary period. He quit because he finds the work difficult.
I remember the same mother telling us some 10 years before it was perfectly alright with her if he would get a job as a service crew at the nearby Mac Donald's. Cecille and I were shocked. Is she sending her son to school, break her back so she can afford his tuition fees merely for him to learn how to say, in proper diction, “Good Morning! Welcome to Mac Donald's!” and “Thank for coming!”?
I do not understand her latest lament. If we are lazy as parents then we should expect lazy children. If setting up signs and directions for our children to follow we see as trivial mainly because they are laborious, then it is our fault once they go berserk. If their view of the world is myopic, they just inherited that from us. What you sow, you reap. There should be no blaming them.
Cecille and I chose homeschooling for Carmella because, while still feeling her way, we wanted to raise the sign post along her journey ourselves. For most, however, all that task is left with the school. We have good schools but schools are not washing machine in themselves. We can not, no matter how much sacrifice we have to endure in meeting those rising school fees, expect our children to end up “whiter than white” after a full cycle. All that is still up to us.
The world is noisy and the noise keeps getting louder for children to hear their parents. It now becomes even more necessary to persevere when giving instructions for them to follow, constantly hoping that in the din it is our voice they will keep hearing.
