Good Parent vs Good Parenting

We often associate the term under privileged with economic standard but children (and even adults) need a lot more in life. As humans, we need a right balance between physical (economic), mental and spiritual well being. But children in big cities have little opportunity to do physical work as everything is easily available on click of a button. They have rare possibilities to immerse in the warmth of nature as most species and mountains/ rivers have vanished, except from books. They are isolated in nuclear family as most family bonds have disintegrated. They run from schools to classes to malls to movies, all in the controlled environment and confined to four walls. They have little exposure to the world outside and remain as kings of their isolated caves.

In such circumstances, parenting becomes all the more important than it ever was in the history of man-kind. I have been working with children for many years and realized that there are many good parents but most lack good parenting skills. Parenting is the only job in the world where the largest numbers of people are employed without relevant education, training or skill! You may be a good parent providing for all the needs & comforts by working 24*7, but are you really preparing your child for life. It will not be surprising if they grow as misfits and ill prepared to face the future which will be very different with unique challenges compared to what we have today.

As parents we need to equip our children with attitude & wisdom that helps in their evolution & happiness. Here are some tips from my own experience:

School is a limited box but parenting is unlimited world

Role of parent is very different than that of a school. Most schools are limited boxes focused on imparting passive education that helps to excel in exams. It is exactly for this reason that parents need to do everything else that schools can’t so that the child moves from limited to unlimited, so that he gets active exposures & experiences that helps to excel in life. While schools generally are focused on head alone, parents need to get the hand and heart in operation. I often read that ancient gurukul’s which were driven by dakshina were much better as each child was handled separately so as to unleash his potential but with mass scale factory production model of modern schools that are driven by earnings, we seem to have regressed. A school can’t have all the resources, so make world your classroom.

Body, mind & soul recognizes unity and not separation

Our meal is not made of just one vegetable or one grain but consists of wholesome dish made from a combination of all of them together like a thali. Similarly, children & even adults learn the best & the most when they employ all their senses together like in swimming and not just by reading or watching on mobile. Thus, learning by doing (active) through student led multi-disciplinary projects is much more impactful instead of teaching as individual subjects (passive). But most established systems are based on past patterns and thus, there is enormous competitive pressure on children thanks to multiple choice questions! Is life about choosing this & that or balancing both? Our mind is not binary but much more evolved and complex. Isn’t it better to nurture individuality through creative differentiation?

Infact, all information is now available easily on internet so researches suggest that for future children will need skills like critical thinking, collaboration, adaptability, entrepreneurship, communication, analyzing information, and curiosity. It is useless if a child can’t measure a meter by hand practically but goes light years away theoretically.

Thus, it is essential that children have time for free play and to break & make things. They should be able to see outcome of their actions and that comes when they work on real world problems and get opportunity to implement. What is the use of so many science projects on saving environment when hardly any are taken up for real implementation!

Growth is outside the comfort zone

Everything in nature grows after overcoming pain & stretch…for e.g. a seed to tree, a caterpillar to butterfly. Even lion cub is shown how to hunt by lioness after it wounds prey and lets the youngster finish it off. Similarly good music needs right tension like in guitar or tabla. It is the pressure that changes the fundamental structure of a carbon and transforms it into a diamond.

It is the stretch, the challenge that makes learning real and fuels the motivation. But with abundant resources, less time and rat race to become good parent, we end up giving all material comforts but negligible challenges. This is not only damaging the child’s individuality but also his creativity and attitude to overcome and win…obviously ego grows out of bound! Good parenting demands that we create opportunities to make our children face challenges and learn to succeed or fail but handle both with grace. This can start from simple things like cleaning the house or making own food or walking for an hour!

I often ask adults during my seminars to tell me one incident in life which taught them the most and more than 80% answer that it was a big challenge that they had faced. Thus, over protecting, over preventing, micro managing is bad. I’ve seen parents make big fuss when their child is not given hot water during a picnic! Aren’t these the times to handle uncertainties or get creative?

Also, right challenges can channelises the enormous energy that children have for their growth & development. They need outlets which are best available in outdoor physical activities. If not, the energy will turn into anger, rage, frustrations, tantrums, etc. The sense of accomplishing a difficult task after all the hardships makes them their own hero. It builds their confidence and they wait for the next challenge. Operating in the learning zone has a positive snowball effect on their overall approach to life and inculcates variety of skills. At appropriate age, it might be a good idea to take a gap year to get out of comfort zone…this can give exponential leap for personal transformation.

Gadgets are the new drugs

Over millions of years, humans have grown amidst nature playing, working, fighting and their body is not meant to remain static. One can’t get satisfaction seeing a picture of strawberry milkshake; similarly a human can’t get satisfaction without real experiences.

The virtual reality, as the name suggests, is fake & unreal. It rewires brain and gives false sense of accomplishment (when we win a game), or confidence (when a super star defeats dinosaur). But we continue to fear a real cockroach! Most children can play subway surfers but can hardly balance themselves on a skateboard!

Other ill effects include attention deficit, hastiness, imitation, inferiority complex, influence of serials & advertisements, etc. All community interaction stops as we are too busy in the virtual world. It won’t be wrong to state that overuse of gadgets is as bad as cigarette, alcohol or even drugs.

On the other hand gadgets are great tools if used consciously for defined purposes like learning, for increasing work efficiency, for sharing inspirational stories, etc. They are just tools and must be used as such.

As parents, we need to first assess our habits and then have strict limits for our children. What is the use of burning ourselves and earning so much, if that earning is going to buy different version of bad tools that harm our children! Isn’t it much better to let children get dirty in mud or catch a frog or jump on a sofa or open that old watch instead?

Your children will become who you are, so be who you want them to be

The first question we need to ask is whether we are a good parent. Are we worthy of imitation? Are we improving? How good are our habits? Are we learning? Are we undertaking & facing our challenges? Are we the best that we can potentially be? Are we walking our talk or just preaching?

Learning, doing and sharing is a simultaneous & continuous cycle and applies at all ages but for some reason 0–25 yrs is considered as time to learn, 25–50 as time to do and 50+ as time to share. Do we parents between 25–50 yrs invest enough time to learn something new as we expect our children to do? If we can’t learn, how can we teach?

Not just material comfort and tools, out children need right virtues and money can’t buy this! It needs investment of time and effort of parents. You can do a simple test to verify this — think about 3 happiest moment of your life and most likely those will be some wonderful experiences you had and not possessions. What helps is the eco-system (which is fast depleting) including grandparents, cousins, friends, relatives and even nature. Nature is not just the ultimate teacher but also a great healer, provided we align with it. It must be noted that learning environment i.e. eco system is more important than teachers or tools. It also helps to unveil our true generous higher self which wants to help, give and serve others.

We parents, especially in cities have huge task on hand. First of balancing our own lives and then building foundation of our children. We may add lots of bricks but they are of little consequence if the foundation itself is weak. Thus, focus on right attitude, character & mind set through variety of engaging activities can go a long way. While knowledge comes from studying, it is wisdom that gets internalized and builds character of a person, this comes by living & by being. It is we who define success for them based on our own limited world view. We need to open our perspectives and let them build themselves for a future that they wish to create. Money can only buy short term entertainments but it takes a lot of will, effort, time, determination, perseverance, struggle, love and so on to get long term happiness. It is time we focus on what is important for long term!