Explain the lines"your children are not your children.They r the sons and daughter of life's longing fr itself

Question

What does the poet suggest about raising children?
Do you agree with the poet's idea? why or why not?

Answer 1

The poet means that children carry on the species of human....without children, our species would become extinct. It is hard to disagree with this person on this issue. He is not suggesting anything about raising children, just the survival of man.

Answer 2

This quote from "The Prophet" is an interesting one, but I don't think you give enough of the passage to make your question clear.

I do agree with Gibran on this one. What he is suggesting about raising children is that in raising them, parents should remember that they are not possessions, but rather individual human beings with their own thoughts and feelings. Parents should not expect that because they give life to children, they can raise them to be little clones of themselves. They need to understand that children are not, ideally, extensions of oneself, but rather autonomous individuals. Parents who force their children to be just like themselves are making a mistake, even if they think they are doing it out of love.

The reason I agree with this is because I believe that each person has the right to be themselves, and to be unique. I believe that people who are forced to follow in someone else's footsteps by being told what to think and what to dream are robbed of their humanity. I have known people who were raised by parents who did not allow them to be individuals. I don't blame the parents, because the parents thought they were doing a good thing. I don't blame the children because even as adults, they don't know any better. But I do feel sorry for all of them because they have willfully blinded themselves. It doesn't make them bad, but it does keep them from being self-realized individuals.

I think good parents give their children love, guidance, and support, but still allow them to be themselves. I always know when I am seeing a good parent when I see a very conservative or very liberal person with a mature adult child who has completely different views. It tells me that the parent raised the child to have confidence and to be true to who they are.

Answer 3

it means that the children that you have is not totally yours they were born for the purpose for a person's life. The poets suggest that we should not think that the children we have is totally for ourselves.
I agree because every one were born for a purpose.

Answer 4

Heiress

Answer 5

One of my favorite writers; Kahlil Gibran.
If you read the entire poem, he suggest that though you create and give birth to your children you can never own them. They will have their own thoughts feeling and personalities.

In the line " They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you." he seems to make reference to the idea that children, as we all do, belong to a divine creator. Therefore, we cannot own them as we would worldly possessions.

I don't think that Gibran, in this work, is conveying child rearing practices but rather enlighting us to the realities of being parents. Read it in it's entirety and judge for yourself. It's a wonderful piece of work.

"And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children." And he said:

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 by Kahlil Gibran

Answer 6

nice one ;)... ok now ur children may not be children they may be adults... so they r ur son..yes i agree with the idea...