The Skilled Profession of Child-Rearing

Sri Sri Daya Mata

The Skilled Profession

of

Child-Rearing

The Skilled Profession of Child –Rearing

Bringing children into the world is not only a nature-given right, but also carries with it a God-given responsibility. Society demands training if one is to be a lawyer, accountant, or mechanic. But how few are prepared for parenting- the most demanding of occupations!

Advice of a well-known doctor who advocated no discipline-just allowing the child to be free to exercise his own will, to “do his own thing.”

Cultivating a Close Relationship

With Your Children

It really is a skilled profession to bring up children, to understand the needs of the child. Each one is different. In the sight of God, we are all souls, possessing the same qualities as the Divine. But because each one has free will and independent intelligence, we have developed in different ways, with unique patterns of karma.*Each child must thus be understood as an individual.

It is important that parents cultivate the right relationship with their children.

Keep the Lines of Communication Open

            In order to train your children properly, you must establish effective communication with them. Let them feel they can confide in you. Encourage them to be truthful by allowing them to say whatever is in their minds. If you turn a child away because he has told you something you do not like, that child will become evasive, trying to mask his true feeling and to hide behavior of which he knows you will disapprove. He will instead seek out someone else as his confidant. It is far better that you be that friend, the one to whom he can always turn. In that healthy relationship with your children, they will not feel a need for drugs or go elsewhere for understanding.

Take time to talk with your children. Answer their questions and explain your guidance to them in language they can understand. You cannot just say, “Don’t do it.” You have to reason with the child in a way that will get him to listen. One learns by listening, even if one does not agree with everything that is said. Encourage the child in willingness to listen. Constructive words will remain etched in his consciousness. He may be grateful for them when one day he himself becomes a parent. Good rapport with your children has to begin in the early years. If you wait until a problem arises, it will be far more difficult to open those lines of communication at that time.

One thing I would caution about: Never force your own spiritual views on your children. Don’t say to your child, “Because I’m meditating, you’re going to meditate.” Children are like flowers; allow them to grow up and develop their own personalities. There is nothing wrong with that. Your part is to provide them with the right example and sense of direction-that they learn to love God, to accept and carry responsibilities, to be unselfish, to be kind to others-the aggregate of qualities and virtues that is the measure of a spiritual-minded human being. Children should be taught to be caring and unselfish.

Introduce Children to a Sense of Responsibility

It is important also to teach children to accept responsibility. I am always appalled when I see families in which the parents do everything-all the cooking, dishes, cleaning, gardening-and the child sits in front of the TV or goes off to visit his or her friends, and has no chores. This is not right. Why do parents feel they must do everything? Why aren’t they giving the child the kind of guidance that will help him to develop skills and responsibility? The child grows up to be a careless and unreliable man or woman who doesn’t know how to train his or her own children. These habits are passed on from one generation to the next, so today many young people are the victims of our having failed in our duty to them. If a child is given everything he wants, he does not learn the value of anything. Teach the child that he should contribute his part to the family, to his circle of friends, to his community. That prepares him to cope with what others will expect of him as an adult.