Musings: My Role as a Father & Grandfather

Celebrating Father’s Day on Sunday, I hope that each father had a happy and loving day spending time with their kids and grandkids. At this time, I have been reflecting on my role as a father and grandfather, and I thought I would share my sentiments with you.

Parenting is the toughest job on the planet! Babies are not born with a “how to raise them” manual. Each child is different as I found out from my daughter and son. Parenting is a lifelong learning process. When you ask people what kind of a parent they want to be, you mostly get one of two answers: “I never want to be like my parents” or “I want to be just like my parents.” Unfortunately the former is the more popular answer. So. why is parenting so difficult? The answer may lie in Khalil Gibran’s poetry about children in his immensely popular book “The Prophet” – an amazing read. I have read that book cover to cover over a hundred times, and I keep it by my bedside.

As you read, Gibran’s notes that our children are born with their own destiny that we cannot visit in our wildest dreams. We may choose to be like our children but not force them to be like us because life does not go backwards.

This is very obvious with our children today. Most seem to be so advanced, especially in the arena of technology. I have always maintained that our children are here to teach us! They may be our greatest teachers. Gibran tells us that our children come as arrows from the bow – the more stable the bow, the further the arrow will travel. The image that accompanies the poem is a mother and father forming the two halves of the bow; the child is the arrow, and God is the archer. That says it all! I have felt my job as a father is to be a role model for my children and to create stability in their lives. Not that I have been a perfect father or grandfather (even now continuing to learn every day), but I have always been there for them through the thick and thin. I believe when our children make mistakes, they shouldn’t be punished but helped to learn from their mistakes. We are all fallible, and it is important to create empathy for our children when they make mistakes.

When my children were in grade school and I sent them pocket money every month (adding more as they progressed to the next grade), I had three rules:

1. Give 10 percent of it away
2. Save 20 percent
3. Send me a budget of how you spent he 70 percent

When these were fulfilled, I sent the next month’s check.

My daughter was always on time; my son Tariq would call and say, “Dad I did not get my check for this month.” I would tell him I did not get the budget for last month. He would then say he would send it today, and I promised him I would follow through with the check “today” as well. I sent it prior to getting the budget to promote the importance of keeping agreements and building trust. Yes the budget showed up late sometimes, but that’ OK, the trust was established.

This entire exercise was designed to help demonstrate the importance of keeping agreements and building trust. In my opinion, 95 percent of love is trust and respect. Fathers need to earn this from their children. I didn’t want to pry into how my children spent their money; I wanted them to know where their money was being spent. This in time has created a mindset to save and give and to be cognizant of their expenses. Though Tariq is now gone, he was an extremely generous person, and my daughter is very much on top of her savings, giving and operating on a formal budget.

As a father, seeing the fruits of my labor has been so very rewarding.

Now, being a grandparent is simpler. As the joke goes: Have you ever wondered why grandparents and grandchildren get on so well? It’s because they have the same enemy!

I am blessed to have three beautiful, smart and healthy grandchildren. Shahin is 9, Khalil (inspired by Khalil Gibran) is 7 and pretty Miya is 3. They bring an untold amount of joy into my life, and they are unbelievably smart. Shahin can now beat me at chess – very humbling. It is great to see them as sponges with an insatiable curiosity to learn. They keep me young, and I also learn from them and relish in their growth and understanding. While it is important to provide love to the point of spoiling them, there needs to be a firm balance.

There is a difference between an “older” and an “elder.” An elder imparts wisdom and knowledge and models responsible behavior. An older often does the opposite – demonstrates irresponsibility and models bad habits and behaviors. While one never knows how children turn out to be, I do know that often children do mimic their parents, especially ones that want to become like their parents.

I believe one of the most important practices we can put in place is to start teaching parenting in middle and high schools. Teen pregnancy is a huge issue, and many of these offspring of teen parents end up in gangs. Tony – the boy who killed my son – is a good example. He was born to a 15-year-old. Though at the Tariq Khamisa Foundation (www.TKF.org) we do address this issue, such parenting classes should be a mainstream curriculum as important at science, English and math.

One of my dreams – as President of the Child Safety Network (www.CSN.org) founded 25 years ago by a good friend Ward Leber – is to create a National Center of Child Safety and Parenting (details in a future issue) where parents and would-be parents have all the free resources needed to become better parents and to keep their children safe. The truth is our children are not safe, and there is a strong need for good parenting. The safety of our children and the lack of good parenting should not be so in the richest nation in the world!

Sending peace and blessings to all, and thank you for your continuous support of my work.