While we celebrate and wish our teachers Happy Teacher's day today, let's not also forget the best teacher that any person could have in his/her life - the parents.
Parents taught us how to be a human being - taught us to eat, to walk, to talk, to clean ourselves, to have manners and to have other crucial survival skills that we need to master to live in this world.
My parents are both working parents. I grew up being minded by the maid during the day. Yet I remember during the night, my mother would spend her time with me, reading me books and teaching me the alphabets. She instilled in me the love for books and for reading. I didn't go to any nursery. The first school that I went to is the compulsory pre-school when I was 6 years old. And I went into that school already knowing how to read.
By that time, my mother had also taught me to memmorize the important verses for solat like al-Fatihah and tahiyatul awal even though I was still too small to perform the solat. I remember watching her pray every night and sometimes I would follow her movement by her side. I remember back then, my father would call me to sit on his lap after his prayer to hear and say the doa with him. I remember going to the mosque every Ramadhan for the terawih prayers; sitting by the wall waiting for my mother when I was small and later praying with them when I was able to.
My parents were very strict about the food I eat. It is very rare for me to be able to eat junk food, even maggi. Every morning, she would make me eat half-boiled egg and drink milo. Later on, I managed to persuade her to switch my drink to light nescafe (yeah, i was a coffee drinker since small :p), but she would only allowed it if it was with powdered milk. No condensed milk for me. As a routine as well, my father will give some vitamins for me to eat in the morning. At night, the whole family including the maid would have dinner together. There was no TV in the dining room and no one was allowed to eat by him/herself in front of the TV. During dinner, my father would normally talked about what was on the news on that day.
My mother is very particular about manners - close your mouth when yawning, do not burp loudly in front of companies, do not interrupt when adults are speaking, do not walk in front of people when they are sitting down, say Alhamdulilah when sneezing or burping, and the list can go on from here.
My parents would always take time off during school holidays to take the whole family for a road trip. I was a very bad traveller then, as I was always having motion sickness when travelling in a car for long distance. Yet that never detered them to take me on any other road trips. It was mostly domestic travelling, but when they had some extra money, they would bring us for a trip overseas, to see how other people in other parts of the world lived. During these trips, my parents would teach us about the history of the place, of the people and the geographical significant of it. But the most important lessons that I learnt from them was that no matter where we went, no matter how difficult the situation maybe, they would always strive to perform solat within the allocated time. I remember performing solat underneath the stairwell in Heathrow, (back when there wasn't a prayer room yet), at the highway R&R in Europe, by the cold river in Scotland, and so on.
Where we travel normally depended on their financial situations and opportunities for that year. However, they had made a pact that when each of us (me and my siblings) finished our SPM, they would take us to Mekah for our Umrah. Alhamdulillah, they managed to fulfill that pact. Each one of us were brought to perform our Umrah after our SPM. And it was the best and most enlightening trip in my life.
To me, my parents are my best teacher, the one who taught me (in words, in action, in their approval/disapproval, and in their own actions and deeds) to be human, to have manners, to value education, to travel, and above all to put Islam as my compass in life. So on this Teacher's Day, I would like to dedicate my whole-hearted gratitude to them, while not forgetting other individuals and teachers that had helped to enrich my education throughout my life.
"My Lord! Bestow on them Your Mercy as they did bring me up when I was young.''
I had read once somewhere a story: One man, whose wife was expecting his first child, went to a pious and learned man to seek advice on the best way to bring up the child. The learned man replied, "If only now you ask that question, then you are already lost."
It brought up some important questions:
Parents taught us how to be a human being - taught us to eat, to walk, to talk, to clean ourselves, to have manners and to have other crucial survival skills that we need to master to live in this world.
My parents are both working parents. I grew up being minded by the maid during the day. Yet I remember during the night, my mother would spend her time with me, reading me books and teaching me the alphabets. She instilled in me the love for books and for reading. I didn't go to any nursery. The first school that I went to is the compulsory pre-school when I was 6 years old. And I went into that school already knowing how to read.
By that time, my mother had also taught me to memmorize the important verses for solat like al-Fatihah and tahiyatul awal even though I was still too small to perform the solat. I remember watching her pray every night and sometimes I would follow her movement by her side. I remember back then, my father would call me to sit on his lap after his prayer to hear and say the doa with him. I remember going to the mosque every Ramadhan for the terawih prayers; sitting by the wall waiting for my mother when I was small and later praying with them when I was able to.
My parents were very strict about the food I eat. It is very rare for me to be able to eat junk food, even maggi. Every morning, she would make me eat half-boiled egg and drink milo. Later on, I managed to persuade her to switch my drink to light nescafe (yeah, i was a coffee drinker since small :p), but she would only allowed it if it was with powdered milk. No condensed milk for me. As a routine as well, my father will give some vitamins for me to eat in the morning. At night, the whole family including the maid would have dinner together. There was no TV in the dining room and no one was allowed to eat by him/herself in front of the TV. During dinner, my father would normally talked about what was on the news on that day.
My mother is very particular about manners - close your mouth when yawning, do not burp loudly in front of companies, do not interrupt when adults are speaking, do not walk in front of people when they are sitting down, say Alhamdulilah when sneezing or burping, and the list can go on from here.
My parents would always take time off during school holidays to take the whole family for a road trip. I was a very bad traveller then, as I was always having motion sickness when travelling in a car for long distance. Yet that never detered them to take me on any other road trips. It was mostly domestic travelling, but when they had some extra money, they would bring us for a trip overseas, to see how other people in other parts of the world lived. During these trips, my parents would teach us about the history of the place, of the people and the geographical significant of it. But the most important lessons that I learnt from them was that no matter where we went, no matter how difficult the situation maybe, they would always strive to perform solat within the allocated time. I remember performing solat underneath the stairwell in Heathrow, (back when there wasn't a prayer room yet), at the highway R&R in Europe, by the cold river in Scotland, and so on.
Where we travel normally depended on their financial situations and opportunities for that year. However, they had made a pact that when each of us (me and my siblings) finished our SPM, they would take us to Mekah for our Umrah. Alhamdulillah, they managed to fulfill that pact. Each one of us were brought to perform our Umrah after our SPM. And it was the best and most enlightening trip in my life.
To me, my parents are my best teacher, the one who taught me (in words, in action, in their approval/disapproval, and in their own actions and deeds) to be human, to have manners, to value education, to travel, and above all to put Islam as my compass in life. So on this Teacher's Day, I would like to dedicate my whole-hearted gratitude to them, while not forgetting other individuals and teachers that had helped to enrich my education throughout my life.
"My Lord! Bestow on them Your Mercy as they did bring me up when I was young.''
**********************************
I had read once somewhere a story: One man, whose wife was expecting his first child, went to a pious and learned man to seek advice on the best way to bring up the child. The learned man replied, "If only now you ask that question, then you are already lost."
It brought up some important questions:
- What do we want to teach our children?
- What do we want them to have in order for them to be somebody worthwhile, somebody we can be proud of?
- Do we have those knowledge within us right now for us to teach them?
- What values do we want them to have?
- Are those values the one that we carry with us right now?
Some may already be teachers for their own children already, while some, like me are still given the time to seek and evaluate our answers, ourselves to the above. I hope and I pray that I will be at least as good a parent/teacher that my parents had been to me. Ameen.
