In the famous poem, The Rainbow, William Wordsworth used the expression, "The child is father of the man." This expression means that all our positive and negative traits are established when we are young. Indeed, if you watch children at play, you will notice them demonstrate certain characteristics which remain with them forever.
It is necessary to groom children to adopt healthy attitudes and positive traits so that they grow up to be balanced individuals. Read these quotes about children to know how children are different from adults.
It is necessary to groom children to adopt healthy attitudes and positive traits so that they grow up to be balanced individuals. Read these quotes about children to know how children are different from adults.
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And there are other ways to look at this quote. Mine is; the more effort in both listening and responding to Children is what makes me a better person, a better Man.
“Martin Luther King did not begin his famous speech with, “I have a complaint…”
There is another saying that children and saints behave similarly. A child is artless and as long as it remains unpolluted by so called ‘growing up’ , it will rejoice in the simple but true delights of life like a rainbow. The poet here wishes to remain the wondering child always and not grow into a cynical adult who cannot appreciate the ‘Rainbow’. Wordsworth, adored and saw God in Nature.
Frued had theorized three types (charecterstics) of personalities: (ID) , (EGO) and (SUPEREGO) and described the ID as the instinctual feature found in the newborn infant since birth as well as in the animals, this type is the original source of the EGO and SUPEREGO which are found in adults later on thats why the child is the father of man.
I see, and have long considered yet another interpretation and application of this famous quote. In their inherent wisdom of so many primal aspects of humanity (humane-ity), the child can and should be the father to the man – if and only if the man is wise and considerate enough to allow himself to be instructed, guided, or otherwise set back on a more righteous path – by the child (whether the child is another younger one, a man’s own inner child, or the inner child of another). (ala – “Everything we need to know, we learned in kinder-garten.”) Just as I have learned valuable things from children, I have assisted some of my mentors in life with understanding and envisioning things from perspectives they either failed to see, or were rendered unable/unwilling to continue to see once they “achieved” their “advanced” knowledge and status. Others may disagree, but I prefer to consider this interpretation just as valid and every bit as worthy in my life’s journey.
“The child is father of the man” can, of course, have different interpretations. The way some of us have come to interpret this mysterious and somewhat cryptic phrase is as an esoteric metaphor. The ‘child’, our own inner essence-individuality born of a more awakened Conscience, becomes the true ‘father’ of our lives. In other words, our fragile state of innocence and wonder is really our true nature.
Always, the child is very near to the God. It knows all the solutions for our problem. But it cannot pass it to us because it doesn’t know to speak. There is a proverb in Tamil, “there is no better teaching than father’s”. The child can solve the problems of his father. So it is said as child is the father of a man. When it grows up, the distance between the child and the God increases, and it forgets all the solutions.
Wordsworth was a romantic poet. He always believed that imagination was one of the major source of writing a poem. So, in a literal sense, we can compare the child with imagination and the father with poetry which directly relates that the imagination is the source of poetry.
psychologists argue that personality of a person completes, albeit to a great extent, by the time (s)he turns eight, arguing that a child as he behaves, or is socialized in childhood will exhibit and behave in later ages. it is rightly said that ‘as the twig is bent so will the tree grow’.
Brilliant post. I had a therapist tell me this many years ago and I came away from the session perplexed. For years I wondered if he meant something more spiritual, as in, your father’s soul ends up reincarnated in your offspring at some point… All I know is that when my father did pass, I felt somehow wiser and more inquisitive than before. Very interesting stuff..
i think there is no concept of child here.
actually it means
“future will be like ur present ”
u can aspect the fure of any body or thing on the basis of his present
it connotes present moulds history.
this is a nice quote that in a way summarises our quandaries and consternation. All our lives most of us grow up picking on the deficiencies of our parents and as we grey, it dawns on us that they were the best they could.
So the child that behaved as a father once, is now grown up and his own child takes on the baton of the role of the father by pointing out the father’s deficiences.
Or simply: A child creates a father by being (first)born. Until then the father was just a man.
A child is a replica of purity and demonstrates the attributes of goodness and truthfulness which can act as a Guiding Light for an adult towards the path of righteousness.
The inherent good qualities of a child with all its purity encourages a Man to be like it (the child) if he is considerate enough to accept its qualities and follow them.
Thus a Child with all its pure qualities resides within a man as a guardian light. Hence a child can be referred as a Father to a Man.
Simple, as a child learns from his/her father, an enlightened parent learns from his/her children. Don’t over complicate things. Simplicate.
The poet william wordsworth presesnts a paradoxical line “child is the father of a man “.as we make a shallow observation ,we think that this maxim seems contradictory but as we make deeper analysis we find this maxim very relevant .human life begins wih childhood .manhood is the result of childhood .a person cannot be a better father of tomorrow without being a good child of today.in other word,present is the result of past and future will be the result of present and in this phrase child represent past ,man represents present and father represents future.