Don’t worry if your children never listen to you, worry that they always watch you. In this post, I would like to focus on how I struggled to raise my children.
Raising children is one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences of our lives. Parents play the same role in shaping their children that a potter plays in shaping a beautiful pot from clay. Childhood lessons are of utmost importance as those values are ingrained in the child and are the backbone of their personality. I would like to mention a few of them:
Developing Social Skills:
Before starting school every child’s first interaction starts with the immediate family and relatives which is the first step towards socialization. We should encourage them to look into their eyes and communicate to build confidence. We should also help them learn appropriate greetings and general social behaviour. When they start going to school their social frame gets extended. They started learning to be friendly, accommodative and adaptable to their social surroundings. Such kids grow up with the ability to adjust to any environment, which is very important to their personal and professional life.
Flexibility :
Children make friends when they start going to school. This is where they start learning how to deal with uncomfortable situations like teasing, bullying and general awkwardness. Parents today unnecessarily interfere for the smallest of inconveniences. Please be sure of the seriousness of the situation before interfering. I always encouraged my children to resolve disputes between friends by themselves and never tried to indulge.
Curiosity :
Curiosity helps the intellectual development of a child. Parents should always take interest in answering their child’s questions, no matter how monotonous or repetitive they get. My children never let me rest with the constant bombardment of questions that I used to answer the best I could. My son used to disassemble and then reassemble his toys. It is important to nurture this inquisitiveness. Growing up isn’t only about academic excellence, but also about understanding what the kids are interested in.
Empathy :
Care, love, kindness and compassion should be taught to children. A child learns this by noticing and watching their parents and other people that surround them. Children are very perceptive, they observe the little things and learn from them. Parents are the role models for children. Please maintain an ethical code of conduct at home. Children are very quick to pick up the attitude that the parents have towards friends, colleagues, domestic helps etc. They also learn a lot from the empathy and kindness with which we help someone in need, be it someone who needs financial aid or someone who is sick and needs to be looked after. We should try to teach moral values and important life skills in conjunction with academic knowledge.
Dear readers, I hope you like this post. Please feel free to post your comments, questions, suggestions or feedback. In my next post I will talk about inculcating good reading habits in young children.
Excellent post mam.