A Cat, a Dog, and a Fence

My mom loved Sesame Street. It was one of those things in our household that everyone loved. The show was, of course, made for us kids, and it was clean, often funny, and educational. Our mother, who had immigrated to the US with my father after getting married, enjoyed watching it to learn English. So we watched a lot of Sesame Street.

Many of those childhood images for SS have a place in my head and heart, but one I go back to often is a short, 30-second cartoon featuring two children on opposite sides of a fence. One of the kids looks down and squeals, “Gee, what a nice doggy”. The other child looks astonished, and says, “That’s not a dog. It’s a cat.” Before we know it, the two are bickering loudly about who is right. After a few moments of this, the boy, grumbling, decides to walk around to the other side of the fence, and realizes that the girl was right. It was a dog. Just then, though, the cat peeks from the other side of the fence, and the girl realizes the boy was right, too.

It seems so easy to be able to see the “truth” especially when it’s staring right at us. But many of us often forget that more often than not, there really is more than one side to a story. When I think about this in the context of being a mother, I sometimes feel nauseated to the core at my judgmental self.

I pride myself in trying to reach out to and understand my children and the problems they face. I can’t claim to know it all, but I try. But I fail, too, and when I remember times when I have judged children based on my reality, and my understanding of the truth, without seeing their side of the fence, I wish I had acted with more wisdom. And I pray for that wisdom now and in the future.

For parents who have grown up in different times, different circumstances, and maybe even different countries than their children, it can be difficult to understand our kids’ struggles. We might even dismiss them as “not big enough problems”. But as Muslim parents, it is our responsibility to raise our children on the Right Path, with wisdom and empathy. If we hope to raise our children as good Muslims, we can’t hope to do much good until we try to understand them.