We Need To Change Our Parenting Skills!

Today, more than ever, Parenting has become a challenge for parents! Whereas, for parents, the most important issue is the Education of their children, various other issues come into being! An important issue today for parents is the health and safety of their children because this limits what the children are allowed to do! As such, the Government needs to formulate policies which can help encourage healthy parenting. Although, the family has been a unit not to be interfered with, soon however, even this will change! With corporal punishment being banned in the schools, soon, the Government is bound to formulate various rules for Parenting a child. This would include a code of conduct to be adhered to by the parents! Thus, as a parent, thou shall not spank your child, or reprimand him for wrongdoing! If you do so, then your child can take action against you, and action will be taken against the erring parent,good grief!

I have noticed a gradual change in my students who belong to class nine, ten, eleven and twelve; this can be seen in their noisiness, garrulousness, and hyper-activity! Children will do only what they think is right or what they believe is beneficial to them. Even my children will not do what I tell them at the first instance. If I reprimand them, they come up with explanations somehow seem to be rather rational and correct, so I have to keep quiet! Sorry, maybe they were doing something important, and I asked them to get me a glass of water and they took too long to get it! Maybe we parents are really growing old, old fashioned and out of date? So shouldn’t I be surprised if my younger daughter discusses cars with me, while my elder daughter discusses the facts of life with greater understanding and maturity that I could show when I was of their age? It seems as though, we parents need to change our attitudes as parents since, perhaps our children are more aware about the world than we were at their age! Today, if we have to instruct our children then we have to do so by convincing them, or perhaps make them see that what we are telling them is backed by reason and rationality!

Today we need to cajole our children into doing what we think is good for them, and the society needs to understand the responsibilities of parenthood! It is very easy for the Media to criticise parenting, but do they understand that today parenting comes with greater challenges than it used to do in the past? Our children are more informed than we were as children in the past, and parenting has greater challenges than it used to have in the past. Today your child is better informed than you were, and he or she needs to be convinced that you are working for his or her betterment or well being! Unfortunately today’s parents are more busy than their parents were, and it is the lack time that they can give to their children that is taking its toll. so don’t be surprised if your children are more conscious about their appearance because they get to learn everything from television! Whether it is Deodorants, or Sanitary Napkins, they know it all, thanks to the Electronic Media! I was surprised when a student of class tenth sent a friend request on Facebook, but then realised that things have changed, and we as parents and teachers have to change according to time! So then it means that we might as well bid adieu to the Guru-Shishya tradition or the traditional system based on the statement, “spare the rod, spoil the child!” Forget all those old adages, and accept the fact that today’s teacher, and today’s parent is the child’s  best friend for today’s child is “the father of man”!