Sunday, January 01, 2012

Our children...

How we bring up our kids plays a major role in how we shape them as good and caring citizens of this world. I admit I am not the best parent in the world but I do hold some views especially after observing a lot of my friend's kids. There are many facets to bringing up a child, I agree...but I feel the first and foremost thing is that we have to teach them values, values like learning to care, learning to respect, learning to accept. I am not going to lecture about good parenting here but just want to throw light on a few aspects..

Nowadays kids are always in a hurry...hurry to be somewhere, hurry to do something, hurry to get up and get going. Kids today spend hours together on Facebook and other social networks but when it comes to serving a guest who comes home or speak two kind words to the granny who lives next door they are absolutely clueless. I had written a blog about how people behave in their online versus real lives earlier which is kinda related to this post...

Today parent's have no time for their kids - parent's may be fluent in two different languages but the only language they communicate with their kids is in English, parents think spending quality time is taking kids to the mall / theme parks, parents think their job is done if they send their kids to 'good' schools - they assume the schools will teach them all that they need to know about life!

Parents often forget how important their role is and that kids mirror them first and foremost (Yatha Raja - Thatha Praja), so how they behave with others, how they treat others matter the most. If all of the parent's interactions are happening online and if the parent's hardly have any visitor's home then it becomes very difficult for the child to pick up on important social skills.

Today's kids are pampered with all kinds of lavishness but nobody seems to be bothered to teach them about reality. The parents today are going about their jobs like a horse with its blinkers on and the same is happening with children. This kind of upbringing only leads to self-centeredness which is really really dangerous in today's society. Today's kids want to come up in life no matter what, they are hardly aware of the trials and tribulations their parents are facing and even if they are they don't care. They want to grow up faster in life losing touch with reality, losing touch with the people who brought them up and cared for them. They want to stand tall in society forgetting that it is not possible without being strongly rooted to their base. Today most of the problems faced by western society is due to the failure of the family system and that is where we Indians are in a better position but we need to work on this to get better and prevent our values from being eroded.

So I think it is high time that all of us pledge, pledge to do a better job in bringing up our kids, pledge to teach them to be sensitive to the pain and suffering of others (not in a sarcastic fashion), pledge to teach them about nature and her myriad beauties, pledge to teach them on how to interact with their relatives / neighbors (maybe learning a thing or two ourselves in the process), pledge to be kind even to strangers, pledge to teach them not to be superficial beings but grounded in reality, pledge to teach them to really adjust and live collectively with others, pledge to teach them to respect other beings human (especially women) or animal, pledge to make them sensitive enough to choose a profession which is a service to all of mankind and nature, pledge to teach them to learn responsibility early on by letting them have a pet / care for plants, pledge to teach them to share with others and be unselfish, pledge to teach them atleast one regional language that we are fluent in, pledge, pledge to teach more about our values and heritage, pledge to make them relish the taste of real Indian food and not let them become slaves of Pizza and Fries, pledge to teach them that competing and getting ahead of the pack is not everything in life, pledge to teach them that science and technology is not the be all and end all, pledge to really spend 'quality time' with them and not just push expensive toys up their throat, pledge to teach them to learn to help someone in need, pledge to teach them that having a big heart is more important than having a big bank account, pledge to make them interesting and not dry people, pledge to teach them that the journey is always more exciting than the destination, pledge to teach them to pause and smell the roses on the way!!! Hopefully the world tomorrow will be much better than today.... :-)


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