Parenting a super child!

The more I read the more I get overwhelmed as to how complex the human is. I have always heard my grandma saying, “You can probably find the depth of an ocean but not that of the human nature.” A human (Intelligence Quotient+ Emotional Quotient + Physical Quotient + Spiritual Quotient by Mr. Stephen R. Covey) is the sum of genetic coding, parenting style, environment (I call it a city culture), schooling, and peer groups.

Your child’s experiences with the outputs as words, actions, and ranging behaviors are the result of many differential calculi. The most evident reflection that he could mirror back to you is your parenting style, no matter what age he is.

More than anything else, we ourselves have become challenges for our own good, let alone other factors, because we are not perfect. Please allow me to share with you what makes a (my) child to become at least an affable human on earth:

• Keep all communication channels open (including positives and negatives). Nothing is there in the world that cannot be solved with effective communication. Give this virtue to your child.

• Make not your child Vitamin N (No) deficient. It’s okay to say “No”. For instance: “Can I buy what my friend has bought?” Our answer is also a “no” many a time. We do not know what is there in store for our child’s future. Handling failures is an essential life skill for our fortunate go-getter of this era. Modern-Day parenting- particularly for career-oriented moms-does not have the 25th hour for spending quality time so we have made a deal that we would dine together, cook together, watch TV together. We sit in the same room while he studies and I work. Mom and dad would not have their phones around. You make your checklist that suits your family.

• Explore and make a good use of teacher-child-parent as a tripartite bonding to share your load of nurturing your angel. The 21st century moms and dads have this advantage. Schools are more than ready to work in a great partnership.

• Many a time, we, as parents, fall prey to mis-parenting or common inadvertent errors in parenting; e.g. grinding the food for a 7 month-old baby, feeding the child forcefully, showing rhymes on a cell phone while feeding the child etc. Homo sapiens on the earth are known for becoming outliers ever since they have evolved. No parent wants to compromise on that deal ever. Unfortunately, in India, we convert it into a competition or a rat race. We fall into traps e.g. “My child’s classmates are preparing for an IIT test, so I am also sending my child for classes.” Let the creative and inner beauty of our child flourish. Guide him to identify his latent potential. A good read in this connection is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell that gives an apt context to this point.

Autonomy, my-space, self-reliance, self-management, entrepreneur, eloquence, democracy, specialization, equality, friends and buddies are some new-era expressions in our children’s dictionary. They probably perceive your nit-picking style very old-fashioned.

Let them make mistakes, let them tumble, let them stand back again all by themselves, let’s leave them alone, let’s not helicopter them, let’s NOT make decisions on their behalf. Because, they are NOT our extensions, they are entirely different humans, being born in a different world with different challenges, different needs, different opportunities, and above all they are NEW BRAINS, YES NEW BRAINS. And, it excites me.