SALAMATI FATHER'S DAY!

Fatherhood should be honored by true love.

You may have heard your kid singing that song praising mothers for all their laborious works and granting them unconditional love. Fathers are no where in this song except to love them once after mommy’s thrice. Does this Hadith really contribute to children always saying they love their mothers more? Shouldn’t it be equal?

As hard as it is to make money so too it is for fathers to get love these days, let alone equal. Not that one takes care of the family in order to receive father’s day cards and birthday presents. Not that one is a father so he may use his children to offset his expenses and be secured at retirement.

But honoring a father has become a weird concept, although the Prophet has rightly equated pleasing one’s father as to that of pleasing God. People express that differently but the point is two many squabbles between parents, sometimes violent and even separating, leads to terrible disturbance in the minds of children. Children will honor the parents once they honor themselves.

Fathers also experience child birth pains and are entitled to some loving. But again men seem to come over as macho; that don’t hug and kiss. When a man brought his child in the presence of the Prophet and he kissed him; the man exclaimed he doesn’t! What did the Prophet reply- well if Allah removed love from your heart who am I to enter it? It’s not wrong to hug your boys and especially girls, and say I love you and say how beautiful they are. But sometimes the cultural burden is too much. Some fathers are so into the haram and halal of what the kids are doing that they forget to appreciate them for who they are.

The best sadaqa and charity one can expend on one’s family is time. And believe parents really are soccer moms and hockey dads. Nothing compared to living in the old country way back! You play and come home. Now play is a job. But the time spent will be well rewarded. Boys will see their dad as role models. Going out on family events and Masjid dinners all help cement this relationship. So when time to loving the father there is reason to it, although love it self has no reason. Yusuf, the Prophet, says in the Quran, about his love for his father Yacoob, is such that it grieves him not to be with him. But that did not come just like that. Yacoob cried for forty years, unstoppable tears of missing his beloved young son and lost his eyesight in the painful process. So love goes where love is.

Parenting nowadays takes conferences and guide books. Imagine parenting a child needs a PhD in techniques. But while this maybe new the reality is the fundamentals of parenting remains the same. Closeness, sincerity, time, good listening skills, empathy, hugging and providing are all in the teachings of Islam. Why would a child leave a divorced mother’s home and relish living with a poor father? It’s because somewhere his parenting skills meant love. Not shouting and judging but embracing and understanding. Today many youths do not tell their parents the secrets of their lives until they get into trouble. A father is most times the best friend of his daughter because not that he knows the jokes that makes her smile but more importantly he can assure her he will not get angry at her silly mistakes.

Fathers should love and children should love them like mothers equally.