Time was that large families left parents little time or inclination to monitor and schedule their children's lives. Now with smaller families, greater awareness, a sometimes paranoid view of dangers lurking around every corner and the internet, parents have become all too involved in every aspect of their child’s life. Are you a super-involved parent? Do you hover? Maybe you need to guard against becoming a helicopter parent!
Helping clear concepts and offering suggestions is OK but you’re not going your child a favour by doing their homework for them. You're certainly not doing them any favours by going to their teacher to fight about their grades. How to learn is as important as learning itself.
Your child does not have to excel at studies, be a piano virtuoso and be an elite athlete (yes, yes, even if Sharmaji’s son/daughter manages to do it all seemingly effortlessly). A schedule full of classes and skill development and educational pursuits leaves the child very little time to actually be a child.
Remember that dystopian story about the Stepford children – those obedient, passive, homework loving kids – who were actually robots! You want to raise kids who are quirky, funny, interesting, curious, maybe a little disorganised… but kids with personality!
Kids cannot learn from your mistakes. They can only learn from their own. While you must protect your children from danger, don’t mollycoddle your child to the extent that you insulate them from life’s realities and shield them from reality. Kids are a lot tougher and more resilient than you may think
Yes you can protect your child… up to a point. But if you protect them from every problem and never allow them to fail, you're really not doing a good job of parenting because you're leaving them unprepared for life…which can be considerably crueler that you will ever be.
Ask yourself if you really need to keep tabs on everything all the time. Sometimes being protective is just short of emotional blackmail; which is objectively a terrible thing to subject your child to.
Some parents want to know what their child is doing without their child knowing. Don’t be that parent. If you're keeping tabs surreptitiously, that’s just spying. It’s also dishonest. Your child deserves age appropriate freedoms and yes, some amount of privacy too.
Being a kind parent is not about tolerating bad manners, offensive or boorish behavior – towards anyone. Check your child when they are rude because if you let that slide, you're effectively telling your child that bad behaviour is OK and you will end up raising a person who is ill-equipped to function effectively in society.
Maybe you were ultra protective and cautious with your first child; by the time the second /third came along you were like Meh..whatever. It’s a good idea to be clear about rules, firm about enforcing them and consistent about whom they apply to. Take the long term view and begin as you mean to go on. In particular, don’t have different rules for boys and girls… there you do an injustice not only to your daughter, but to your son as well.
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