Readiness to become a parent

Difference between human and animal parents

Parenting is just a biological task for non-human species; hence it lasts for a short time and is less complicated. Mammals tend to nurture their young ones more than non-mammals do, but the number of offspring an average adult mammal produces doesn’t allow for too much attention to be bestowed upon them.

Humans, on the other hand, have to provide for their children’s physical needs, protect them from harm’s way, impart skills and values and help them stand on their own two feet. It is a lifelong responsibility for human parents.


Readiness to become a parent

Consider yourself ready to become a parent if you are:

• Ready to provide resources such as money, food, clothing, shelter, and time; all basic but important needs.
• Ready to nurture and support the child by providing comfort, warmth, love, acceptance, focused attention and re-assurance.
• Ready to promote and support the child’s physical, emotional, educational, social and aspirational development from infancy to adulthood.
• Ready to provide a stable home and responsible role models.

Becoming a good parent

Every person can become a great parent provided s/he is willing, open and ready to be one. Good parents need great strength to guide their children well. They need to provide certain structure, order, and discipline in which the children can grow optimally. They should not constrict their children but maintain a certain expectation of mutual harmony and respect.

Three most important requirements of a good parent are:
• Know yourself well.
• Know your partner well.
• Be absolutely sure that you want to become a parent.

A happy loving marital relationship

One of the best gifts you can give to your children is a happy loving marriage, as your relationship with your partner remains the foundation on which your family will grow. Before becoming a parent take a good look at your relationship and see it as it will be seen by your children. Notice how you and your partner relate to each other. Do you raise your voice when you disagree? Do you sulk when you don’t get what you want? Be truthful with your answers and learn more harmonious ways of communicating and strengthening your partnership before you start a family.

Remember, a harmonious home is the first requirement of a child.

Maintaining a stress-free environment is imperative not just for a child’s wellbeing but also for a healthy and loving family bonding. So identify your stressors and try to resolve them before you decide to have a child.

If the couple is unprepared for all the emotional, physical and social changes that a baby involves, their marital relationship might get derailed. On the other hand, if they adopt their attitudes towards each other while making ample space for the new baby and her demands, they will grow closer in marriage.

A harmonious lifestyle

It is important to take a good look at your lifestyle and be mindful of your choices regarding eating a healthy diet, maintaining a regular exercise regimen, refraining from drinking and smoking etc. Both the partners must support each other and make a shift in the lifestyle if needed. After all home is the first place where a child learns his/her habits from!

Career planning

Even though you don’t need to involve your larger family and your employer in your baby plans, it is advisable to keep them posted. This increases trust and transparency in your personal and professional relationships. It also helps when you require support from them. You can also think of taking a sabbatical or work from home options. After all a baby is a full time job. How successful you are juggling work and parenthood will depend upon the support at home and at work.

Choosing Love

When we choose to experience motherhood and fatherhood, essentially we are choosing to experience love. Little babies offer us a great opportunity to know, feel and extend love. They sandpaper all the rough spots on us and we do the same to them.

Conversation between I and I AM about your parents

I: Sons are supposed to be mama’s boys while daughters are papa’s darlings. How true is that?
I AM: Contrary to the general opinion, girls have a special relationship with their mothers while boys do with their fathers. Both the parents have a great responsibility. When you solve your own issues, your children’s issues automatically get resolved.
I: Is there any gender bias here?
I AM: Yes, when fathers resolve their issues, the sons’ issues get resolved while when mothers resolve their issues, the daughters benefit.
I: Mothers are supposed to be the most unconditional in giving their love. How important is a mother-child relationship?
I AM: Your relationship with your mother is a reflection of your emotional health, your emotional quotient. It tells you how well you can handle your emotions. It also reflects your love for the self. So if you think that your mother does not love you, it means that you do not love yourself.
I: My mother has been very loving and nurturing. Does it mean that I love myself unconditionally?
I AM: Take a good look at your relationship with your mother. Is it 100% perfect? Don’t you find any faults in her? Doesn’t she find any fault in you? None of you love yourselves unconditionally, so no mother-child relationship is completely unconditional.
I: As I have grown older, my relationship with my mother has improved. Is it because of maturity?
I AM: As you grow older, you evolve and mature. You accept yourself a little more. You love yourself a little more. This gets reflected in your relationship with your mother. As you grow comfortable with yourself, you become comfortable with your mother.
I: What about fathers? What is our relationship with them?
I AM: Most girls think of their dads as their universe while most boys perceive them to be a threat.
I: Why threat?
I AM: Because they wish to have the power that they see and admire in their dads. Every boy thinks that his father is a superman, a hero; his ideal. Now if this hero tells the son that he is not behaving properly, he is not strong enough, smart enough etc or shows his disappointment in some way, this boy cringes inside. He tells himself that he can never match his dad. He can never be a hero. He can never please him. So, the father is perceived as a threat.
I: What do our dads reflect back to us?
I AM: For all children their fathers are the symbol of their inner power. They signify inner authority. If you do not have a good relationship with your father, it means that you feel powerless inside you. On the other hand if you share a healthy relationship with your dad, it means you are blessed by an inner power.
I: What about people who lose their parents?
I AM: If you lose your mother, it reflects a deep rooted issue of self love and nurturing. If you lose your father, then it is a deep seated issue of powerlessness that needs to be addressed in this lifetime. Such people choose this external lack of support in order to experience their own intrinsic worth. They turn inwards for love and nurturing.
I: This means that every external circumstance and every relationship that we have tells us something about ourselves.
I AM: That is right. This is a perfect system for ‘knowing’ yourself! Please be aware of your significant relationships and you will learn a lot about yourself.
I: What about our siblings? What role do they play?
I AM: Your siblings reflect the support system that you feel within yourself. If you feel a lack of inner support, you will have a troubled relationship with your sibling.
I: Sometimes we have good relationship with one sibling but a conflict with another. What would that signify?
I AM: The one that you have conflict with carries the same energy structure as you. However, since your siblings come from the same parents, the root of your inner lack of support comes from a lack of self nurturing and powerlessness.
I: What role do our friends play in our growth?
I AM: They play a smaller part as compared to your other significant relationships. They make sure that you are continuously growing and evolving. They do this by acting in a manner that you appreciate or that irritates you.
I: What is your message for today?
I AM: Look at everyone and everything as a reflection of YOU. Learn about yourself. Grow and evolve.

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.

Children learn what they live

By - Dorothy Law Nolte
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

Your Role as a Parent

Most of us take our role as a parent too seriously. We feel completely responsible for our offspring’s welfare. We feel it is our duty to guide them in all aspects of their lives. After all we are the parents. We know what is best for our children. If we will not guide them, who will? All these arguments are well intentioned and I have no issues with these. But in our desire to do the best for our children, we forget to give them ample doses of love, affection, and understanding. We think that too much love would spoil them. We believe in discipline more than understanding.

In my view, all that we parents ever need to do is to provide generous dollops of love and acceptance. In the absence of a warm and loving atmosphere, no child can ever achieve his/her full potential. Even discipline does not really work in a hostile environment. In my practice as a ‘Life Skills Coach’, I come across individuals with low self esteem, which stems from their childhood. Unless the home atmosphere is warm, caring, safe, protective, and friendly, a child can not be self- confident. And as you well know, self-esteem is the most critical factor in achieving success in life.

When we like ourselves for what we are, we are more likely to work hard and achieve more. Observe your children. Your encouraging, loving words are their biggest motivators. The moment you put them down, their enthusiasm to do anything vanishes in thin air. If your children are not doing well at school, first look at your home environment. Be objective. Ask yourself; are you the cause of their poor self esteem? Most of the times, we unfavourably compare our children to their friends. What do you think it does to their self image? We think that by shaming them, we are motivating them to excel. We couldn’t be more wrong. Apply this rule to yourself. Do you strive to work harder if someone ridicules you? No. You would build up frustration, and anger towards that person. That is exactly what is happening in your home. Pay attention to it and take corrective measures.

My favorite line is a cry from a child, “Mum, love me the most, when I deserve it the least.” This line haunts me. Yes, when we think that our child does not deserve any love because he has been naughty, disobedient, destructive, or a failure; that is when he needs our love the most. Our job at these times is to trust our children and help them discover the talents, abilities, resources, and the personal best that is hidden behind their rough and unappealing exteriors.

We feel let down and disappointed by our children, if they do not tow our line. We label them as ‘difficult’ children. Have you ever wondered if the children feel the same about us as well? Have we ever given unconditional love to our children? Why do we always have to be judgmental at every step? Our parenting years (and our children’s ears!) are full of ‘good boy’, ‘bad boy’, ‘good girl’, and ‘bad girl’ at each step and after each action. Such adjectives confuse children. Their self-worth fluctuates from minute to minute. From praise to disgrace!

Our attention is more focused on the socks left on the floor, unmade beds, badly done homework, bad influence of friends, poor grades, and complaints from the teachers. We do not focus on their good qualities, assets, and strengths, especially when these do not meet with our pre-conceived notions of what is good and what is bad. If we are constantly reminded of our shortcomings, we start believing in them. Our children do the same. By telling them about their strengths, we help them believe in themselves. Their worth increases in their own eyes. They feel capable of making a difference in the world. This empowered attitude leads them to success in whatever field they choose.

So let us get out of our cocooned worlds of expectations and reasoning. Let us pay more attention to playing with our children and understanding them. The time spent together with them is something that we should treasure more than anything else. I believe that our children are our ‘gurus’. There is a lot that we can learn from them. Just observing them is an education by itself.

Are we ready for this new challenge!!!

Conscious Parenting

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.