When my elder son was a baby, we could not make him eat. When my younger son was a toddler, we could not stop him from eating. He would not only finish his food but also check out his bowl by turning it upside down, and occasionally, especially when he had fish porridge for lunch, he would express his delight by wearing his bowl like a hat. Of course, that would call for a bath and his curls needed to be shampooed as we did not want him to stink of fish the rest of the day! My elder son could not be made to eat any rice through his babyhood. But, my younger one loved rice. We tried to give them the same things to make our lives simpler but it did not work. It never works. Babies are born distinct. They are already individuals when they take their first sip of milk. And to treat them as a homogenized unit because they cannot communicate efficiently with you is unfair. To be a parent, means to revel in each child individually.
Comparing the two is natural but can hurt the children as the one critiqued could loose his self-esteem and start being envious of the role model, who in his turn would have fair chances of becoming a conceited prig.
Life for me rolls out spontaneously. You can only do so much for
“‘Tis all a Chequered-board of nights and days
Where Destiny with men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the closet lays.”
When old Khayyam wrote this in the eleventh century, he hardly would have seen this being put to use in a blog on parenting, but I picked these lines because they explain how I view life as a parent. Children come with their own destinies and all we can do is to try our best by them. Each one has an individual baggage that he lugs through life. Environment, parenting and schooling can only play a part in bringing them up.
If you spend a lifetime training your child to be a prodigy in any subject, don’t you feel it would be unfair to him? Think of Mozart. He was a child prodigy, much toasted and feasted about in royal courts of Europe. Did he have a happy life? Did he have a full life? Then why would we want our children to excel before they are ready? Why not let them enjoy childhood as a time when they can experiment and have fun? Why would we want them to be the child who scores one hundred per cent every time? Does that put him at any advantage? Why the panic?
Are all adults geniuses? There is no one who will send an adult to a coaching school to train him to be a genius at work. That is why perhaps developing the skill to be a lifelong learner is necessary to survive in the real world.
Earning your bread is important. But do you think that marks or results are directly proportional to how successful a child will be in his adult life? Robert Kiyosaki’s book, Why do A students work for C students, springs to mind as one muses on this issue as does the Bollywood blockbuster, The three Idiots. Guiding your child towards developing the right attitude will help him make choices for himself that will be smart and best for him, prepare him most to deal with the baggage he was born with. The question is “how” would you do this? Perhaps by being supportive and by teaching him to be a good human being…to learn to accept a fall, get up and march along cheerfully despite the cut. The important lesson he needs to learn is how not to injure himself or others when he falls and how not to be scared of the fall. Learning to lose and build again is important. We keep reiterating the story of Thomas Alva Edison who failed but saw his failures differently and finally lighted up our lives with his bulb. He is known to have said,
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
And
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Such an attitude is difficult to imbibe, but takes you a long way in your journey through life. And that is what we try to prepare our children for… a journey through life as a good human being.
Again the definition of a good human being has altered over time. Now, it is all about power and money, isn’t it? But, does that make you happy? Do you feel better living as an unhappy individual? Think about it carefully when you make a choice for your child.
Bad behavior had historically given way to good behavior and civilization. If we choose bad behavior as the norm along with a caveman diet, we are perhaps moving in a reverse gear towards the collapse of civilization. Is that what you want your child to inherit? Or, a gracious forward moving society, which is optimistic, filled with love, honesty and tolerance? Keep the options in mind every time you allow a swear word to pass through your lips. My kids keep reminding me not to lose my dignity by getting angry and losing control. Anger disarms us and makes us the slave of bad behavior. And unless, we make our children and ourselves conscious of this, we could very well fall into a trap of bad behavior and a hostile world. Do you want others to swear at your child when he swears at them in a world full of animosity, hatred, mistrust and anger? The first step, as my Italian friend said to parenting, is leading by example and then supporting the choices the children make. Educate them to make good choices and not bad ones. Let them rise above failure, anger, repentance, hatred, greed and all negative emotions and watch them soar. Let them choose their own path, their own courses, their own lives as they will equipped with a sound system of values and the ability to accept failure and move on to a new success.
And feel rejuvenated as you watch them explore a wonderful new world at their own pace and in their own terms…
432m's Blog 