Do your child's confident choices leave you with a lingering sense of inadequacy?
As the family finally sets off from home after many arguments and exchange of blame for the delay, there is a moment of lull as the car takes off. "Alright, so where are we going for dinner now?" asks someone, invariably the one at the driving wheel. What follows is chaos as multiple voices make as many suggestions.
By the time order is restored and a decision arrived at, tempers have frayed, sensitivities injured and there is at least one person sulking, while another simmers.
Twenty years ago, you would step out of home, decision of meal and venue already made with no arguments or opposition, and everybody looking forward to the meal with equal enthusiasm. The decision then was made by one person - the head of the family -- and the others fell in line. Today, every member of the family has a say in every decision. On the positive side, this also promotes a great sense of togetherness and bonding.
We empower our kids to take their own decisions from a very early age. We ask them the cuisine they prefer, the movie they want to see, the holiday they wish to go on, the colour of walls they prefer, kind of furniture in their bedroom and study, and even the subjects they wish to study!
Are we doing the right thing by encouraging children to make their own choices in fields ranging from entertainment to academics as we take the backseat? Before we realise, we get them used to being the masters of their own Destiny. And we are the first ones to suffer the consequences.
Truth is that the generation gap between our parents and us was much narrower than that between our children and us. Children today grow physically, mentally and emotionally by leaps and bounds and it may be difficult for us to accept, but they more often than not know their own mind and what they want.
Truly speaking, do we even have a choice? Do our kids ALLOW us to guide them? In fact, their confident choices often leave a lingering sense of inadequacy in parents. In the midst of the many voices surrounding our children, where is the space for us? Between hundreds of friends they link with on Facebook and various other social interaction fora, where do they have the time to listen to their parents?
It's a networked world out there where children consult and guide each other and openly share their disappointments and triumphs on the World Wide Web. Very often the parent may hear through another of what his or her child is going through.
Such is the blind belief in peers that a parent's well-meaning advice can sound like nothing more than unnecessary preaching. How then do we reach through all the social clutter and make the voice of reason be heard? And, more important in this world of multiple choices and innumerable career choices, are we even sure what direction to nudge our child towards?
How many of you can say with a degree of honesty that you are absolutely sure your kid is made to be an engineer, a bureaucrat, a policeman, businessman, politician or an academician? Even as we attempt to guide our children, we are all deep down unsure of the choices we make for them. Those who claim to be absolutely certain are either misled or too rigid for our own good, or that of our children. In fact, thank God, children today question our choices and prefer to go with the flow, to follow the rhythm of their lives.
How then can we ensure that we stay on the same page as our children? When my children were young, I had devised a means of catching them at their most vulnerable moment of the day to chat and ensure all was well in their little worlds. At bedtime, I would sing them lullabies and in between ask them about their day. As they grew up and have started staying awake later, sometimes through the night, lullabies and bedside chats disappeared.
However, recently I have started thinking it's important to reinstate the same (chats, not lullabies). How else would you stay connected and learn to think like them, follow the process of their rationale and then take a hard look at their decisions?
What then is the best path to take? I would say the most important thing one can do is listen. Listen to your children speak to you; learn to listen to even the silences. Ensure you keep some time aside for them; insist they keep some time aside for you as well. Do not invade their private spaces; create a space for yourself with them. Step into their world, try to understand what rivets them and learn to speak their language. It's not as complicated as it sounds; just a daily half hour of the clichéd "quality time" would do the trick.
So long as you have inculcated basic values in your child in the initial formative years and given them a good education, you have already cut through the clutter and been heard. You can then trust your child to do the rest…
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