Anxious vs Conscious Parenting

Parents of our generation aspire to provide the best to our children - the best toys, the best
play space, the best food, the best opportunities, the best education, and ultimately, the
best life.

Is there anything wrong with that? Nope, certainly not. But where very many well-meaning
parents falter is in defining that "best". What they believe is best for the child, more often
than not, ruins their childhood and traumatises them for life.

● My cousin is showing flashcards to her six-month-old to identify colours and shapes.

I did not do that with my child at that age. Is my child lagging?
● My sister-in-law says that she has started making her one-year-old identify animals
in board books. Should I try it?
● My friend has put her child in a certain school, therefore I would like to enrol my
child in the same.
● When I met my cousins at a birthday party, they said that this curriculum is better, so
have I made a wrong decision in choosing another one?

Confused by the overload of information available and influenced by the peer pressure from
other parents whose children are seemingly successful, parents - especially the new ones -
choose a path that often takes them and their children down the rabbit hole of trauma.
Because, once their definition of what's best is based on this destructive model, its vicious
pangs of comparison and competition grip them and their children.

● How soon does my child walk?

● How soon does my child identify car logos/animals?
● How soon does my child operate my mobile?
● How soon does my child start talking in English?
● How soon does my child go to school?
● How soon does my child write alphabets and numbers?
Initially, this might be exciting. But the premature pushing of children into adulthood and
measuring a fish and a dinosaur on the same scale will eventually lead to disaster for both
the parents and their children alike.

The saddest part here though is that the parents who put their children through this trauma
actually mean well. They believe that learning the adult way of doing things sooner would
help their children in their future career prospects. At least that's what's being marketed to
them by the mainstream education system and media and product organisations that stand
to gain by the underlying consumerism. And they, coming from a generation where they
were taught/made to simply obey what was conveyed to them rather than question the
ways of the world, believe this utter falsity.

If we only pause here and question if this theory of 'the sooner, the more successful’ is true,
we'll be able to understand the shaky premise it is based on.

When a child is forced to do/learn things he's not developmentally ready to do, their psyche
is damaged forever. They begin to believe that they are not good enough, that others'
approval matters more than their own self-acceptance. Then begins this drama of living for
others' approval and acceptance, especially the parents. And the child in the child is lost
forever and an anxious, unsure, fearful adult is born.

Another perspective that parents must consider while working on giving the best to their
children is that just because they strive to give the best to their child, should their children
thrive? Will they? Can they? Just because a child is put into a certain school following a
certain curriculum, will they be able to get good grades? Just because a child is sent to
professional football practice, will they be able to be an ace football player? Can every child
in a certain curriculum get good grades? Is that the goal? Unfortunately, parents aren't
happy or satisfied with providing their children with the best opportunities but want them
to excel in it. This is unjust and unfair besides being highly impossible.
Some questions that could help parents mulling over the truth behind the widely followed
education system's efficacy:

● Can all children excel at academics/sports?

● By giving the best and expecting the best in return from my child, whose need am I
accomplishing - mine or my child's?
● When nature has given my child the innate knowledge and ability to suckle milk the
moment she is born, to crawl and walk when she's ready, and to understand and
learn the human languages, would not the same nature give her the ability and will
to learn skills she requires on her own? Is my presumption that my child needs
constant pushing to know what she's good at and to excel in it really true?
● What will be the quality of life as a family when my decisions are influenced by social
pressures?
● What do I want my child to be - anxious or happy?

As an educator, I cross paths with so many parents who were forced to live their parents'
dreams. Someone who wanted to be a cricketer, but who was forced by his parents to
become an engineer, someone who wanted to run a beauty parlour, but who was forced by
her parents to get married into a conservative family where she's a housewife now,
someone who wanted to be a musician, but who was forced by his parents to take up his
father's business...when these wounded souls become parents, they want to give the best
to their children so that their children could achieve what they could not - they put their
children in sports practice and music classes, they make their children dress and behave a
certain way so that they would be called beautiful and successful, they want their children
to get into fields and jobs that will make them proud. What these parents don't realise is
that they are making the same mistakes as their parents.

You could give what you believe is the best to your child, but if that's not what he wants, it is
of zero value to him. You could still give him what you believe is the best, but be sure to
give him also the option to say NO. Give him the option to try it out and fail. Give him your
love when he does. You could give him a garden full of roses, but if it's the daffodils that he
wants, let him seek them out. Your child's life is not yours to dictate. Their soul is not yours
to tame. For like Kahlil Gibran rightly says, ‘your children come through you but not from
you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. ‘

To holding children's hands on the journeys they make and the paths they take,

Abarna