I just read an article online about an eight year old boy who was killed by a man whom he asked for direction. The worse part was that he wasn’t just killed, but was dismembered with parts of his body inside a suitcase in the thrash outside while his feet were in a plastic bag in the killer’s freezer. The boy was on his way back from camp to his house which was just a few blocks away. This was the first time that he walked alone, having practiced the route with his parents a few days before. But he missed a turn and got lost. So he asked a stranger where his house was, got into the stranger’s car and that was the last time that people saw him alive. I hoped he died a quick death. I’d hate to think that his death was a slow one. He was a Jewish boy living in Brooklyn, New York. His killer was also Jewish, both from the orthodox clan.
It’s scary when you think that usually, people who kill children are probably your next door neighbor or friends you know living in the area. This is proven with the case of a mother and son from Kelantan, but staying in Port Dickson I think, who were murdered by their next door neighbor. Then the gruesome beheading of an elderly man and the killing of both grandparents and sister in Negeri Sembilan sometime last year or was it two years back. I find it all very scary.
I have three children (I can say three, previously, it’s always been just two.. just a thought) and I fear for their safety everyday. Whether they’re at school or in the car with Bie or while playing outside the house. I really do worry about them. Whenever I go out and I take them with me, children being children, they’re always out of your sight, running here and there or hiding in between clothes rack (that would be my son) or just gone without trace then you’d see them with your husband at the cashier queuing up to pay. Whenever these vanishing without a trace act happens to me, my heart would be thumping so loudly that I swear I could feel my blood veins popping and breaking all over the place. And that happens even when I am on a constant lookout for them. Imagine if I don’t bother looking out for them. A stranger can just come and take your child away even before you can say Chipsmore. And the scary thing is that, you wouldn’t even realize it because you’d think that he or she is probably still under the clothes rack playing hide and seek.
I have that fear in me everyday and honestly, I don’t know what I would do if they do go missing. Granted that certain things happen as Allah wills it, and that whatever mishaps or events that take place are challenges by Him to see whether you are strong enough, but when it comes to my children, I don’t think I can accept it. I don’t know. It’s just so hard to say. Allah knows best and I always pray for their safety and that they are protected by Allah at all times. But things can happen, you know. Things which you read in the paper may happen to you… [sigh]. I don’t know. Reading stories about children being kidnapped or murdered is heart-wrenching. Being a mother, it is just something that I fear most for my children.
The other thing which surprises me, well.. ironically is that people do not seem to love children anymore. Killing of children or throwing of babies, especially newborn is something that is not as prominent compared to today. Those days, we just don’t hear this sort of stories. Didn’t these things happen 20, 30 years ago? I saw in the news last night about a father abusing his 9 year-old boy with a belt until causing the poor child injury to the head and ears. The elder brother had to intervene to stop the father from beating the poor boy. He also lodged a police report against his father. Kudos to the brother. And the irony is that, the wife is currently pregnant with the 6th child I think. If you can’t take care of your children, then don’t be fertilizing your sperm. Have a heart. Stop when you think it’s enough. Take precatioun. There are many of them now. But no, they wouldn’t do that. They’d rather get their wives pregnant and later when the child is born, so what. Another child to add to the brood. I just don’t get it. Yes, children are temperamental and their behavior can cause headaches and makes us want to hit them on the head and shove them into a dark room just so that they behave, but they are after all children. These are the challenges in bringing up a child, at whatever ages.
I myself have been boiling with madness at my children’s antics, OMG.. the things they do. I hit them. I do. And pinch them or pull the ‘jambang’, the little hair that grow at the sideburn area, which proves to be productive at that point in time to stop them from doing whatever it is that was making me mad. But at the moment, I am sane enough not to belt them on the head and I pray to Allah to constantly give me the patience to nurture them without having to belt their heads. I believe in discipline and I believe in hitting, but at areas where it will not affect their hearing, eye-sight or physical movement. Hit them on the butt-cheek perhaps, or the hands, or the feet. Use a cane if you want to, but just at those areas that will not affect their senses.
What happen to the act of loving children? If not other people’s children, but at least yours? This is definitely a sign. And I guess we should be wary of it. I pray to Allah to continue protect our children and that they may be out of harm’s way. May they also grow up to responsible beings; obedient, loyal and loving with their faith always dictating them the right thing to do. AMIN.
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