Conscious Parenting

It is the holiday season. The mall at Shimla is choc-o-bloc with merry makers. Children are an integral part of this group. Watching children of various shapes and sizes, behaving in various ways to demand attention and goodies from their parents throws up great insights into our evolving society.

Parenting is the most important role that we play in our lives. However, since most of us are amateur parents, we tend to follow the parenting style of our parents or our friends. Some of us do follow our own parenting instincts, but even these get conditioned by the norms of the society that we live in. In today’s world where both the parents pursue high pressure careers, the challenges of parenting become all the more critical. What should we do under these trying circumstances?

First of all we need to get some things clear in our heads when we become parents.

Our children come through us but they don’t belong to us.
Each child is different because he /she carries different predispositions (samskaras) from his /her past lives.
Being bigger in size, does not make us more important than the child.
The child is our equal in all respects, and deserves to be treated as such.
The belief, ‘I know what is best for you’ is fine when the child is young but not when s/he grows older.
Some things are ‘mistakes’ only from our perspective. Those ‘mistakes’ may be just the right lessons for our child.

With these basic facts ingrained in our psyche, we need to:

Avoid using silly words or childish sounds while speaking with our children.
Avoid talking down to them.
Love them unconditionally, look after their needs, prevent them from getting into dangerous situations, and tell them about some dos and don’ts.
Allow them to just ‘be’, by giving them adequate space.
Give our full attention to them.
Sometimes get out of our role as parents and connect with them at the level of ‘being’.
Look at them, listen to them, and hug them.
Avoid comparing them with any other person.
Avoid the tendency to give them more things than they really need.
Avoid being overprotective and interfering in their need to explore the world and try out things for themselves.
Avoid controlling and overbearing tactics.
Stop playing the traditional role of a parent, once the need for all the basic parental functions has passed.
Let go of the need to be needed by them.
Allow them to suffer sometimes. Suffering helps them evolve as better human beings.

Children are the future citizens of our world. We need to ensure that they grow up well adjusted and well equipped to shoulder this onerous responsibility.