Fragile generations or Strong identities

The future of individuals is nested in their experiences and learnings during their childhood and adolescence. The experiences they had in family and friends’ circle, within their school environment or at anywhere in any phase of life in general. When a child opens his/her eyes to this world the journey of learning fires and it continues throughout the life in a transformative manner. However, the most significant values are internalised within the family.

Many people think that upbringing and shaping the character starts after a child is born however various researchers in the relevant field claim that, emotional factors conveyed through the mother, starting an earlier phase of pregnancy, have effects on children’s inner world that could have been placing traces in entire life span. The intellectual capacity gets bolder along with the emotional intelligence and flourishes.

Once they born they start making sense gradually of what is happening in their surrounding and become overt observers, adapt their behaviour and skills according to the provided conditions and available norms. For this reason, what they observe and hear carry crucial importance in their holistic development.

 Take an example of a water drop experiment made by a Japanese scientist; it is observed that speaking to a drop of water changes the shape of its molecules, while the positive messages beautify the patterns the opposite and negative discourse spoils the beauty. If we ponder on the consciousness of a baby, you would understand the impact of the external world right in the womb of mother itself. As humans, we are made of a various combination of materials where more than 60% percent of our body is formed by water, thus you may imagine the psychological impact of the environment and people in our surrounding to our inner world, perceptions, lifestyle and worldview as we can’t seclude us from an interaction.

The role of family stands great in growing humans with sound character, building morally equipped individuals and strong identities that could be open for positive stimuli but immune to any form of oppression and stressful environment, people embedded with positive mindsets and feelings so that they can stand on their feet and therefore could challenge the difficulties and hardships of life.

As an educator, I have come across many parents with the ideology of not letting their kids down at any phase of their life. I have somehow compelled to mark assignments and projects completed by solely parents… Seen personalities who never want their kids to cry for a reason, feel a disappointment, taste a failure etc… On one hand, we see parents who want to pursue perfection by becoming overprotective, providing excessive love and blind form of caring and parenthood. On the other hand, we have been witnessing growing of fragile generations who have no power to stand strong against any tide.

As a matter of fact, as humans, we all need ups and downs. Small challenges or problematic patterns that we overcome in our childhood or early stage of our lives prepare us for greater challenges in the future. We have to realise that we are not helping our kids to be successful by fulfilling their own duties or creating them superficial environments.

Imagine a vaccination or serums? Why do we use them? Why do we endure the physical pain yet injecting them to our bodies? The answer is simple because they stimulate all of the cells in our body and transfer immunity to cope with greater sicknesses. Similarly, balanced, controlled and overseen form of small challenges during childhood comes up with benefits to form a strong identity. I have mentioned as controlled form because children’s right should not be violated just to make them stronger which is supposed to be elaborated as another facet of the problematic implications.

First of all, we have to believe that children are not our properties but valuable beings entrusted by God. Therefore, treating them requires sensitivity and utmost care to conserve their purity while elevating them to higher levels of self-awareness, open-mindedness and successful individuals in social context.

We should realise that they are not racing horses that quench our thirst of achievement, and satisfy our ego or expressing them as a source of pride to proclaim everywhere that my son or my daughter achieved all of these ... These sort of narrow understanding keep children under a tremendous pressure whether the parent realises or not whether they do this consciously or not. To create individuals that are free of anxiety, distress and nervousness parents should strictly refrain from comparing their children with any other individual including their siblings. We shall always think twice before any consequences or reinforcements we will put forward to refine a behaviour.

So what is the balance? How should we treat them then? At the bottom line, we just need to be role models, we should show them our footprints instead of our fingertips to make it more effective. If we want to build a competency or an understanding in them, we shall first demonstrate those, at least declare our intentions clearly and let them observe and learn through our actions. Refrain from forceful actions rather build a dialogue, choose the path of convincing instead of pressure, explain ‘why’, look into their eyes and communicate the message that makes sense for all (in an understandable way), show them you value them regardless of their aptitudes and skills. Remember, the desired effect could only be sought upon sincerity in thought and actions.

I could articulate this with a parable; there was a boy who was eating honey although it was harmful to his body due to a particular sickness. His parents tried all the ways to suspend him eating it but were not able to take a mile. They finally decided to take him to a well-known scholar of their era so that he might find some solutions. Once the boy is shown and the situation is presented the scholar asked the whole family to come after 40 days. The forty days past with so many troubles and they finally made it back to the scholar, the scholar spend just a few words of wisdom and the boy has taken a firm decision not to eat honey anymore and he kept his promise indeed. Later on, parents raised a question to the scholar that why he didn’t say those words forty days back so that problem would be resolved quickly. The response was very unique, in fact, the scholar had some honey during breakfast on the morning the child is brought and he thought that he should wait for forty days (a scientific fact: anything we consume fully departs the body within forty days) then only he could make a piece of advice. As in this parable if we need our words to be heard, our bits of advice to be taken, our intentions to be fulfilled we first sincerely fulfil our own responsibilities in a sincere manner so that expectations meet realities.

Strong identities could only be generated with a proper way of guidance by providing limited freedom where there is no impeding factor for their creativity, infuse inquiry-based learning and practically implementing right theories on parenting ad upbringing.

I strongly feel that every child is a great gift from God Almighty to parents for learning to enhance what they practice day-to-day and year-to-year. Thus, if you are a parent; don’t rush or wait for a magic stick of transformation… Use every moment to learn, read and contribute more to the development of your children so that your expectations, with more realistic frames, would come into reality sooner or later…