A child is not born to continue our path. He has his own way
Shalva Amonashvili.
I try to devote all my free time to my children. They are my love, my joy and my pride. My relationship with my children is based on love, understanding, respect and leading by example.
And education is, in the words of the famous Georgian and Russian educator Shalva Amonashvili, «nourishing the personality». And a personality is nourished by examples, by images.
I’m not trying to make artists out of them. A child is not born to continue our path. He has his own way. But teaching children to be aware of Beauty, to see the beauty of the world around them and to appreciate it, is something I can implement and thereby help them to choose the right path in their lives.
Lebanese-American poet, writer, filosopher and visual artist Kahlil Gibran wrote beautifully about children and role of parents in their lives in his world-famous book «The Prophet»:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
«The Prophet», Kahlil Gibran