CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE

Part Three

The Stages of Growing Up

After the age of two, a child’s growth speeds up — endless questions, sparkling eyes, love of play. The word for child, bola, carries bol, honey, in its very name! Bol, see?! That is, the word bola sounds like “honey, see?” But one must approach the child’s upbringing with care and alertness; let not the child’s being honey deceive you. That is, going too far in showing love and tenderness to a child leads to unwanted consequences. For the sake of clarity, let us present some recommendations we consider important, numbered: 1. One speaks to a child not in baby talk, but in the full language of adults. 2. Do not set out to raise your child as a Wunderkind; do not steal his childhood and playfulness by saying you will teach him reading, writing and other things from the time he is knee-high. 3. The most important and delicate matter: if the adults, especially the parents, cannot agree, settle the matter separately, out of the children’s sight. Never make noise and uproar or behave rudely before the eyes of the little ones.

4. It is natural for a child to fall and to be naughty, but the parents should conduct themselves in such a way that the child himself understands that there is a limit to being spoiled. But this limit is not set by shouting or threatening or by crushing the child’s spirit. 5. The child must be kept away from hardware — the smartphone and the screen. After the age of three a child comes to love fairy tales and stories. He is bought various toys and books with colorful pictures. Then one should read children various stories and fairy tales from books in engaging tones. These things give the child a unique world — the child rebuilds the world of these fairy tales and legends in his imagination and loves to listen to fairy tales; for that reason the purest images, pure words and scenes are used, and it is essential that the fairy tales end only in goodness and that fearlessness and courage are praised in them. 6. A child should have play hours, playgrounds and friends, and the parents supervise this. There is no need to tie a son or daughter to one’s navel; if he has older, sensible brothers, that is very good; if not, conditions should be made for the child to play freely. 7. One should give a child small tasks little by little and praise even his smallest work. Never hurt your child’s feelings; let him always drink his fill from the spring of love. Do not leave your child thirsting for love. 8. When a child expresses his wishes, fulfill them, but not immediately — delay them, set a time, so that in this way your little one also comes to feel that everything happens when its time comes and that patience is needed. 9. From the age of five or six it is wise to set aside half an hour or an hour every day to teach letters and to have him memorize numbers. It is good if by six a child knows how to read and count, even simple arithmetic, how to tell colors apart, and how to lay out and put away his toys. 10. When a child reaches seven, the way of dealing with him becomes serious — the stage begins of stopping the pampering and treating the child as a responsible person. Now his play hours decrease, and his hours of lessons and of helping the family increase. He is looked at with a serious gaze. If he makes a mistake, one frowns a little and says, “Don’t do that.” The wisdom about treating a child like a slave from seven to seventeen is not without reason. Let the child sit on the throne until seven; then he is brought down from the throne. The first seven years were the years of his growing up both in body and in spirit; afterward, too, he is not harmed, only the effort to accustom him to order and precision, responsibility and discipline begins. 11. A child is given assignments, explanations on how to carry them out, and a certain amount of time. The execution of the given assignment is always checked. This includes assignments such as “sweep the courtyard,” “clean the house,” “take such-and-such over there.” The child is not allowed to do a job halfway. 12. A child should know how to handle money. From the age of seven he is given money on the basis of a clear account and his spending is explained to him; from this age one may even pay the child for certain physical (!) work, and if he has creativity, for his creative work as well. One should pay not for lessons and things of that sort, but for concrete work requiring skill and intelligence, physical strength and time. One should count the money he has earned together with him, put it into his purse or his money box, and teach him to set aside a certain part for giving. When we say giving, first of all, let him learn to give money as a gift to his grandfathers and grandmothers. Then to his aunts who are short of means. Then to the needy among relatives and neighbors. One should set up such a financial system that, with the money the child himself has saved, his school clothes and school supplies are bought together. Then you will see an eight-year-old child taking care of his clothes, cherishing his notebooks and behaving as seriously as an adult. Before his eyes physical labor and time turn into money — into value. This makes him grow — there is no room left for idleness in the child’s mind. One should set the child’s sleeping and study times clearly. 13. At the age of ten a child should be entrusted to a craftsman. Check thoroughly that the master craftsman is pure, honest, a family man, compassionate and of clean character. Let the child learn a craft for three hours every day. Here the years can be divided among shoemaking, carpentry, electrical work, plumbing, bricklaying, plastering, even tailoring. Every year he becomes the apprentice of one master. If by seventeen the child can manage ten crafts, it is light upon light. If at this age he learns metalwork and welding and the craft of the cart (car repair, bicycle repair), then there is nothing more to say! 14. School does not give everything; if today’s school, at its present level, teaches above all subjects such as reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and history, and in addition can give the basic information of sciences such as physics and chemistry, that is already a great deal. If today’s school, at its present level, did not strike a blow to the child’s upbringing and nature and did not corrupt it, it would be considered a great achievement. In this sense, raising the child and preparing him for life more in the bosom of the family under the father’s leadership, rather than in the hothouse of an artificial paradise called a private school, is a pressing need today. In this sense it is becoming advisable to send the child to a state school that keeps him until 12.00 and then lets him go home. For it is both free, and exactly half of the child’s day remains at his own disposal and that of his parents. Thanking the school that allows the child to spend half his day free, devoting time to the child both gives meaning to the parents’ lives and offers them the opportunity to carry out their duty as parents properly. The parents do not just throw the child into a craft or trade; they also help him with the skill of reading books and acquiring knowledge independently. The advice to parents is this: it would be good if you had your child memorize 30 lines a week of various wise sayings from the works of classical and modern poets. Over the years these memorized wise sayings would build the child’s thinking and contribute to his view of the world taking the right shape. 15. One should teach a child to choose clothes — clothing that, even if expensive, is of good quality, of a becoming color and of the right size — and also to choose and eat halal and pure food. It is essential to instill in the child’s mind that one may freely eat only food cooked with money one has earned oneself. In conclusion, let us raise the child to be a human being. Let him not babble in several languages, let him not be a modern young man or woman, but let him grow up having acquired human qualities: strong will, steadfastness, loyalty, diligence, resourcefulness, fairness, a craft, courage, devotion to family and so on.

Our personal (in fact, experience that has come down from history) recommendation is this: teach your child the old Turkic alphabet that our ancestors learned, then little by little, over two or three years, have him memorize the book “Sabot ul-Ojizin,” and then from the age of thirteen have him read the book “Turkic Gulistan” written by His Excellency Sayfi Saroyi (originally belonging to His Excellency Sheikh Saadi). Along the way it is good for him also to read books such as “Tarikhi Muhammadiy” and “The Sorrow of Turkestan” by the pen of His Excellency Alikhontura Soguniy. As a result, the world will appear radiant before his eyes. If you teach your child to think rightly and to be resolute, that is enough; there is no need to worry about him: no one will be able to waylay him, and he will not mingle with the ignorant who have lost their identity and now, living abroad, loudly lecture the people back in their homeland.

Akrom MALIK