What is the limit of children’s obedience to their parents?

by Abbas Adil

SHAFAQNA – The Grand Ayatollah Sistani answered a question regarding obeying the parents.

Question: What is the limit of children’s obedience to their parents?

The Grand Ayatollah Sistani: The child has two Wajibs before parents:

  1. Kindness and helping parents; if they are needy and providing for their living expenditure and fulfilling their religiously compatible wishes (and) to a normal standard of life as is invoked in healthy human nature. Avoiding this duty is considered as denying all their good deeds. And this good deed differs according to the situation of the father and the mother, and depends on their financial situation and strength.
  2. Compassion and avoiding bad behaviour; in speech and action even though they may have done injustice to you; and it is narrated that if the parents beat you, you must not be annoyed with them, you must rather say: May God forgives you. These two duties are to be observed for the parents, but the child’s dignity also needs to be observed in two ways.
  • The parents are concerned about their child and they are bothered by child’s action even though it is not related to them. The child must not carry out such act, whether or not the child is prohibited to do so.
  • The parents are annoyed because they have some inappropriate characteristics, for example they do not like their child to go after good acts in the world; such annoyance has no effect on the child, and it is not Wajib to obey them in this type of expectations. And from such a case it is clear that the personal commands of the parents at their own level are not Wajib, and God is the all-knowing, wise.

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