Parenting points.to help your children blossom
Parenting involves a certain amount of
discretion. There is no one standard rule for all children. Different
children may need different levels of attention, expression of love, and
toughness. Suppose I was standing in a coconut garden and you ask me,
“How much water per plant?” I’d say, “At least 50 liters per plant.”
When you go home, if you give 50 liters to your rose plant, it will die.
You must see what kind of plant you have in your house and what it
needs.
1: Recognize The Privilege
It is a privilege that this child – this
bundle of joy – has come through you and arrived in your house. Children
are not your property; they do not belong to you. Just see how to
enjoy, nurture, and support them. Don’t try to make them an investment
for your future.
2: Let Them Be
Let them become whatever they have to
become. Don’t try to mold them according to your understanding of life.
Your child need not do what you did in your life. Your child
should do something that you did not even dare to think in your life.
Only then will the world progress.
3: Give Them ‘True’ Love
People misunderstand that loving their
children is to cater to whatever they ask for. If you get them
everything they ask for, it is stupidity, isn’t it? When you are loving,
you can do just whatever is needed. When you truly love someone, you
are willing to be unpopular and still do what is best for them.
4: Don’t Rush Them Into Growing Up
It is very important a child remains a
child; there is no hurry to make him into an adult because you can’t
reverse it later. When he is a child and he behaves like a child, it’s
wonderful. When he becomes an adult and behaves like a child, that’s
bad. There is no hurry for a child to become an adult.
5: Make It A Time To Learn, Not To Teach
What do you know about life to teach your
children? A few survival tricks are the only things you can teach.
Please compare yourself with your child and see who is capable of more
joy? Your child, isn’t it? If he knows more joy than you, who is better
qualified to be a consultant about life, you or him?
When a child comes, it’s time to learn,
not teach. When a child comes, unknowingly you laugh, play, sing, crawl
under the sofa, and do all those things that you had forgotten to do. So
it is time to learn about life.
6: Nurture Their Natural Spirituality
Children are very close to a spiritual
possibility if only they are not meddled with. Generally, either the
parents, teachers, society, television – somebody or the other meddles
with them too much. Create an atmosphere where this meddling is
minimized and a child is encouraged to grow into his intelligence rather
than into your identity of religion. The child will become naturally
spiritual without even knowing the word spirituality.
7: Provide A Supportive And Loving Atmosphere
If you set an example of fear and anxiety,
how can you expect your children to live in joy? They will also learn
the same thing. The best thing you can do is to create a joyous and
loving atmosphere.
8: Maintain A Friendly Relationship
Stop imposing yourself on the child and
create a strong friendship rather than being a boss. Don’t sit on a
pedestal and tell the child what she should do. Place yourself below the
child so that it’s easy for them to talk to you.
9: Avoid Seeking Respect
Love is what you seek with your children,
isn’t it? But many parents say, “You must respect me.” Except that you
came a few years early, are bigger in body, and you know a few survival
tricks, in what way are you a better life than him?
10: Make Yourself Truly Attractive
A child is influenced by so many things –
the TV, neighbors, teachers, school, and a million other things. He will
go the way of whatever he finds most attractive. As a parent, you have
to make yourself in a way that the most attractive thing he finds is to
be with the parents. If you are a joyous, intelligent, and wonderful
person, he won’t seek company anywhere else. For anything, he will come
and ask you.
If you are genuinely interested in giving
your children a good upbringing, you should first transform yourself
into a peaceful and loving human being.
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If parents are truly
concerned about their children, they must raise their children in such a
way that the child will never have any need for the parent. The process
of loving should always be liberating, not entangling. So when your
children are born, allow them to look around, to spend time with nature
and by themselves. Create an atmosphere of love and support. Allow them
to grow, allow their intelligence to grow and help them look at life on
their own terms, as human beings – not identified with the family,
wealth, or anything else. Just helping them to look at life as human
beings is very essential for their well being and also that of the
world.
Your home should not be a place for you to
impose your culture, ideas and morals upon your children. It should
instead be a supportive atmosphere. If children feel most comfortable at
home, they will naturally try to spend more time there than outside.
Right now, a street corner may feel like a more comfortable place for
them than being at home because of the impositions they face. So, if
that discomfort is absent, they will not make the street corner a
sanctuary. This does not mean that they are not going to be exposed to
the hard realities of the world. They will be, and these realities will
influence your children in some way or the other. But always, parents
encouraging their children to think for themselves, to use their own
intelligence to see what is best, are the greatest insurance for a child
to grow up well.
Most adults assume that as soon as a child
is born, it is time to become teachers. When a child enters your house,
it is not the time to become a teacher; it is time to learn, because if
you look at yourself and your child, your child is more joyous, isn’t
it? You lived like a zombie before this little bundle of joy entered
your life. Now, unknowingly, you have started laughing and singing, you
crawl under the sofa along with the child. Life is happening because of
them, not because of you. The only thing that you can teach your child –
which you have to, to some extent – is how to survive. But a child
knows more about life itself, experientially. An adult is capable of all
kinds of suffering – imagined suffering. A child has still not gone to
that. So it is time you learn life from them, not the other way around.
(source : sadhguru lecture)
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