Like many other things, the art of parenting has become a science now-a-days.
On one end, we have parents who feel the real societal pressure, feel completely responsible for their child, want to give their child the best life possible in the society and transfer a part of their pressure to their child, in the hope that pressure makes coal a diamond.
On another end we have children who feel pressured and who do not find peace in their living. Childhood is the real time when one can find happiness through peace, love and sharing. In the modern world, most children fail to live the life of a child, as they get bombarded by thoughts of an adult world through several channels of information and also get pressured to learn a whole lot of stuff to prepare themselves for the rat-race of their youth.
Though psychologists and intellectuals think that children should be saved from the rat-race early on, even their own children are also going to end up in the same rat-race later, for rat-race is a reality.
Since the civilization is forcing everyone to become extremely materialistic, none can escape from the rat-race. The models of the lucky few who stood alone and became successful, who happened to be in the right place at the right time, cannot be emulated by even them, if their life is re-wound.
Even to change the course of the world, we need children who have to go through these struggles and come out on top to steer the world in different direction.
While there is a need to go ahead with the march of civilization and not restrict children or anyone’s freedom, there is also a need to balance our march with the learning from our past, so that our march is stable.
The question is, can we be liberal in action, yet conservative in our thoughts and values, so that we embrace evolution than revolution.
I propose three broad principles for parents. In my view, these principles will help in ensuring children grow up with appropriate balance.
Fence with Freedom
We do not own our children. Since we are the path through which they came and that path adds up its positive and negative influences in their life, it is important that we grow them to be on their own with as much positives as possible.
We need to mentally fence our children. Fence them with thoughts that would help them ward off what we learnt as societal evils. And this fence has to be deep-rooted. It has to start from a very early stage of children’s life.
At the same-time, if a fence is not adequately relaxed continuously, children will opt out of their fences or their mental growth will become unbalanced. Hence w e need to let them experiment with moving the fences a bit a time, so that they evolve and understand their fences.
The fencing thoughts could be on anything. For eg., it could be about usage of tobacco, alcohol, stealing, murdering, rape, social objectives of life, economic objectives of life, living concepts, principles and so many other things.
But as the child grows up, we need to continuously move these fences a bit back and give space for the children to think.
If somebody steals, then why does he steal..? If somebody smokes, why does he do that and become an addict..? What is the relevance of social and moral values we preach and practice..? Why should any value system be really there..? We should allow the child to question and understand, evolve concepts as the child grows.
We should encourage children to question, discuss, debate, demolish pre-conceived notions. We should encourage children to think and guide them to come to an understanding of why these fencing thoughts are really useful to them.
Such children will utilize their fences to safeguard themselves from any onslaught in life later. If we do not encourage and make them question t heir fences, their fences will become prisons and people could become prisoners of their own thoughts.
One can see so many thought-prisoners in the garb of conservatives and ‘life-ruiners’ in the garb of liberals. It is a challenge to grow our kids in this environment and that’s where fence with freedom comes in.
Push to Perform; Renounce the Result
There are two large bottle-necks hindering the performance of children. Since these bottle-necks get entwined, parents often find it difficult to separate them out and solve the problem.
First is the information overload on Children, which I call as ‘diversions’. Given the huge amount of entertainment and information options in the current world, it is very hard to focus and learn anything for a child, let alone the values of culture and civilization.
Human brain is not so easily wired for multi-tasking. We do better when we work on specific items with focus and concentration. The information overload makes children to lose focus and concentration.
Second is the ability of children to learn specific subjects fast. For eg some people are not so good in numbers and computations. Some people are not so good in language and expressions. Some people are not so good in logical decisions related to numbers. Some people are no so good in logical decisions related to abstract concepts. Also the level of abstraction in concepts that one can understand and practically deploy varies between people.
When the diversions and inability combine together, parents will find it hard to solve the problem.
Parents need to work with children and understand their issues. Parents should act as enablers for their children in learning. If capabilities are an issue, Parents should work with children to improve those or work around those. If diversions and lack of focus are a blocker, then Parents should help children to focus by reducing the information overload or diversions.
While parents keep up with children to perform, where most parents do fail is at the result phase. While we need to push our children to perform well by working hard and smart, we should teach them to renounce the results. Accept whatever result that comes and plan ahead.
Most parents transfer all their worries about a bad result to their children and end-up pressuring the children. Parents also perk up so much of expectations about the result in their children, that children cannot tolerate the result sometimes.
It is important that Parents teach their kids to renounce the result, whatever it is. Our job ends with performing. We need to accept whatever the result is and plan ahead. Parents have to understand and have to teach their kids to understand it, right from young age.
A good result is as temporary as a bad result is and vice-versa.
Life is full of surprises and miracles. Believe in them. Plan the future to the best of your knowledge and abilities. Leave the result or worries about the result.
Believe that life is all about making the best at a given time. Nothing ever is permanent in this world.
Ingrain this in your children.
Educate to Enjoy
Life is an experience in its every moment. Most parents do not teach their kids to enjoy their everyday life.
Children may find their studies boring. They may find doing any work at home boring. They may find serving elders boring. They may find helping the needy boring. They may find learning and listening to new things boring. Sometimes they may find eating boring. They may find even going to the washroom boring.
Sometimes food is interesting to eat. Sometimes it is not. But still we need to eat. Whatever we eat, we need to enjoy and eat. We need to learn to enjoy whatever we do, whether we relish it or not.
The point here is to seek that fun in the actions we do. Unless we learn to enjoy what we do, nothing is going to be enjoyable. There is an element of fun in everything we do, that is hidden, but that we need to bring up on our own.
The key idea in all this to ingrain in Children that every action they do, they need to enjoy it and do it. They need to actively seek that fun and enjoyment in their actions.
Conclusion
Our children are the future of society. In the rat-race of materialistic living, we should not end up producing heart-less machines or sensitive people who cannot survive. We need to build people who are full of life at the same time have the skill-sets to survive and change the world for the better.
A human being is efficient when he/she performs well. A human being is effective when he/she enables the society to perform well. We need to produce children who are effective. That is the need of the hour.
-TBT
The Big Thinking Blog
On one end, we have parents who feel the real societal pressure, feel completely responsible for their child, want to give their child the best life possible in the society and transfer a part of their pressure to their child, in the hope that pressure makes coal a diamond.
On another end we have children who feel pressured and who do not find peace in their living. Childhood is the real time when one can find happiness through peace, love and sharing. In the modern world, most children fail to live the life of a child, as they get bombarded by thoughts of an adult world through several channels of information and also get pressured to learn a whole lot of stuff to prepare themselves for the rat-race of their youth.
Though psychologists and intellectuals think that children should be saved from the rat-race early on, even their own children are also going to end up in the same rat-race later, for rat-race is a reality.
Since the civilization is forcing everyone to become extremely materialistic, none can escape from the rat-race. The models of the lucky few who stood alone and became successful, who happened to be in the right place at the right time, cannot be emulated by even them, if their life is re-wound.
Even to change the course of the world, we need children who have to go through these struggles and come out on top to steer the world in different direction.
While there is a need to go ahead with the march of civilization and not restrict children or anyone’s freedom, there is also a need to balance our march with the learning from our past, so that our march is stable.
The question is, can we be liberal in action, yet conservative in our thoughts and values, so that we embrace evolution than revolution.
I propose three broad principles for parents. In my view, these principles will help in ensuring children grow up with appropriate balance.
- Fence with Freedom.
- Push to Perform; Renounce the Result
- Educate to Enjoy
Fence with Freedom
We do not own our children. Since we are the path through which they came and that path adds up its positive and negative influences in their life, it is important that we grow them to be on their own with as much positives as possible.
We need to mentally fence our children. Fence them with thoughts that would help them ward off what we learnt as societal evils. And this fence has to be deep-rooted. It has to start from a very early stage of children’s life.
At the same-time, if a fence is not adequately relaxed continuously, children will opt out of their fences or their mental growth will become unbalanced. Hence w e need to let them experiment with moving the fences a bit a time, so that they evolve and understand their fences.
The fencing thoughts could be on anything. For eg., it could be about usage of tobacco, alcohol, stealing, murdering, rape, social objectives of life, economic objectives of life, living concepts, principles and so many other things.
But as the child grows up, we need to continuously move these fences a bit back and give space for the children to think.
If somebody steals, then why does he steal..? If somebody smokes, why does he do that and become an addict..? What is the relevance of social and moral values we preach and practice..? Why should any value system be really there..? We should allow the child to question and understand, evolve concepts as the child grows.
We should encourage children to question, discuss, debate, demolish pre-conceived notions. We should encourage children to think and guide them to come to an understanding of why these fencing thoughts are really useful to them.
Such children will utilize their fences to safeguard themselves from any onslaught in life later. If we do not encourage and make them question t heir fences, their fences will become prisons and people could become prisoners of their own thoughts.
One can see so many thought-prisoners in the garb of conservatives and ‘life-ruiners’ in the garb of liberals. It is a challenge to grow our kids in this environment and that’s where fence with freedom comes in.
Push to Perform; Renounce the Result
There are two large bottle-necks hindering the performance of children. Since these bottle-necks get entwined, parents often find it difficult to separate them out and solve the problem.
First is the information overload on Children, which I call as ‘diversions’. Given the huge amount of entertainment and information options in the current world, it is very hard to focus and learn anything for a child, let alone the values of culture and civilization.
Human brain is not so easily wired for multi-tasking. We do better when we work on specific items with focus and concentration. The information overload makes children to lose focus and concentration.
Second is the ability of children to learn specific subjects fast. For eg some people are not so good in numbers and computations. Some people are not so good in language and expressions. Some people are not so good in logical decisions related to numbers. Some people are no so good in logical decisions related to abstract concepts. Also the level of abstraction in concepts that one can understand and practically deploy varies between people.
When the diversions and inability combine together, parents will find it hard to solve the problem.
Parents need to work with children and understand their issues. Parents should act as enablers for their children in learning. If capabilities are an issue, Parents should work with children to improve those or work around those. If diversions and lack of focus are a blocker, then Parents should help children to focus by reducing the information overload or diversions.
While parents keep up with children to perform, where most parents do fail is at the result phase. While we need to push our children to perform well by working hard and smart, we should teach them to renounce the results. Accept whatever result that comes and plan ahead.
Most parents transfer all their worries about a bad result to their children and end-up pressuring the children. Parents also perk up so much of expectations about the result in their children, that children cannot tolerate the result sometimes.
It is important that Parents teach their kids to renounce the result, whatever it is. Our job ends with performing. We need to accept whatever the result is and plan ahead. Parents have to understand and have to teach their kids to understand it, right from young age.
A good result is as temporary as a bad result is and vice-versa.
Life is full of surprises and miracles. Believe in them. Plan the future to the best of your knowledge and abilities. Leave the result or worries about the result.
Believe that life is all about making the best at a given time. Nothing ever is permanent in this world.
Ingrain this in your children.
Educate to Enjoy
Life is an experience in its every moment. Most parents do not teach their kids to enjoy their everyday life.
Children may find their studies boring. They may find doing any work at home boring. They may find serving elders boring. They may find helping the needy boring. They may find learning and listening to new things boring. Sometimes they may find eating boring. They may find even going to the washroom boring.
Sometimes food is interesting to eat. Sometimes it is not. But still we need to eat. Whatever we eat, we need to enjoy and eat. We need to learn to enjoy whatever we do, whether we relish it or not.
The point here is to seek that fun in the actions we do. Unless we learn to enjoy what we do, nothing is going to be enjoyable. There is an element of fun in everything we do, that is hidden, but that we need to bring up on our own.
- One way to make boring things enjoyable is to reverse the roles. If it is studies, Children can become the teachers and Parents the students. If one finds a text-book boring to learn, then he/she can start setting questions from that text-book (for others), by going through that text book. This switch of roles could make it interesting to learn.
- If it is doing something at home, Children can be given the long term responsibility for a work or part of the work to get it done through the parents or somebody else.
- Another way to make boring things enjoyable is to change the format in which we do them. If we don’t like learning a language class by attending it, the same can be done online and that could turn out to be interesting. For eg., one could focus on learning just few key words and sentences such that it helps watching movies in that language. This could make it totally interesting.
- Yet another way to make it interesting is to do things together as a team. It could be an exercise or a practice session or training rigor. Doing it in a team would make things enjoyable.
The key idea in all this to ingrain in Children that every action they do, they need to enjoy it and do it. They need to actively seek that fun and enjoyment in their actions.
Conclusion
Our children are the future of society. In the rat-race of materialistic living, we should not end up producing heart-less machines or sensitive people who cannot survive. We need to build people who are full of life at the same time have the skill-sets to survive and change the world for the better.
A human being is efficient when he/she performs well. A human being is effective when he/she enables the society to perform well. We need to produce children who are effective. That is the need of the hour.
-TBT
The Big Thinking Blog
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