Live WITH your Child


Live WITH your Child

I talked about celebrating children in my last article.  I would now like to share about few gifts we can give our children for their bright future.

1.      Unconditional love- Every parent loves their child irrespective of their health, wealth, status. But I want to talk about is not just love but UNCONDITIONAL love. Loving a child when they are at their best is easy as we feel proud of their achievements but loving a child when they are not at their best is what I want every parent to consciously practice. The child needs the word ‘I LOVE YOU’ the most when they are low. All of us need that when we are low too. The child has to feel loved for their existence and not only for the achievements. The child wants to do well, the child wants to make the parent happy but it is not possible to happen all the time so let’s make them feel loved without any conditions or strings attached to it.



2.      Discipline- Loving a child unconditionally doesn’t mean that the child is left to do just abou anything. Discipline is a very important gift the parents can give to their children. But again discipline with love, discipline with explanations. I know it is hard to explain all the time but it’s worth every minute of your time. Discipline is not – ‘don’t do that’, ‘don’t do this’, ‘stop it now’. Instead the implication of the act should be explained- ‘if you do that, this will happen and that’s not a good thing to happen’. The child needs to know why he or she is stopped from doing something.





3.      Delay in gratification- Every parent wants to give the best to their child but we need to teach the child that everything that is desired cannot be fulfilled. The child needs to learn the ‘art of waiting’.  I might be able to afford a toy car that the child sees in the shop and asks for but that doesn’t mean that I buy it. Instead I can tell the child that he will get it on his birthday or on Diwali or next week or some date ( depending upon how much the child wants it and how much waiting can be taught at the present situation)  The child will learn to wait and it will help in future social interactions.



I would like to share about the The Stanford marshmallow experiment. It was a series of studies on delayed gratification in the late 1960s and early 1970s led by psychologist Walter Mischel, then a professor at Stanford University. In these studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards (i.e., a larger later reward) if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned. (The reward was a marshmallow, cookie or pretzel.) In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures.







4.       Insult will result in insult- Never insult a child, never infront of anyone, not when alone, never. Explain not insult. The child is like a mirror who would reflect everything that has been taught to him and everything that has been perceived by the child from their surroundings. The parents have to always remember that if you insult the child now, the child will insult you later because that is what the child has learnt. If you don’t insult your child, the child will never insult you when they grow.



Parents can be broadly classified into 3 types and I would like the parents to analyse which category they fall into and how they could improve parenting.



 Parents who live through the child- As a child I could not get toys so I will load my child with all the toys of the world. I could not get books to read so I will make a library at home for my child. I could not become a doctor so I will make my child the best doctor of the world. The child might like music but the parents will only talk about how good a doctor’s life is and why that’s the best thing the child should or can do.



Parents who live for their child- Everything in the house becomes child centric. They will eat what the child likes; go to places the child likes etc. Mothers stop living for themselves and just think of their children. It’s a disaster as the parents will have expectations that the child will grow and live for them the way they lived for the child. Unnecessary expectations will lead to unnecessary frustrations.



Parents who live with their child- this is the best way. You provide everything the child needs but at the same time have your own life too. Let’s understand that the child is learning from what they are seeing.  When they see the parents live a fulfilling life, they too learn to live that.



Let’s celebrate parenting and see the child blossom.








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