In the modern days, parents have started treating their children like race horses. They want that their children should be showing brilliant performance in all the different fields of life. In the classroom, they should secure the top position or get the highest grades, in sports ground, they should be the best athlete, they should be the best debater or speller of the school, they should be the best singer and actor in a school drama, and many more. No doubt, this desire of distinction for their children is natural and justifiable but making it a matter of life and death turns the life into a desert full of thorns for the children. Children being hit with such a pressure are found to have lost the meaning of being a child.
They cannot play like a normal child, they cannot laugh or smile like normal children do and even they cannot perform their other routine duties much easily. The seriousness of their faces and depth of their talks make one realize as if they are not addressing a child, rather a mature person who is unnecessarily serious about the different issues of life.
Every child has been gifted with varying abilities. Some may be good in studies, others may be having gifted expertise of painting or other forms of art work and some may be good in the playground. But one trait is common for all; they need to exhibit their childhood by laughing and enjoying their times without considering the matters of world going on around them much. If this representative characteristic of a child is snatched, he may be termed to be 'Unsuccessful', no matter how successful he may be in class, or ground or other fields.
Parents like to praise their children and also like it when others praise them. Without any hesitation, they like to take the credit of any achievement or good qualities of their children. Contrary to this, when their children develop some bad habits, they start crying and curse their bad luck for that. They also criticize their children for being so.
Home or family is regarded to be the first learning place of every child. Till the age of 6-7 when he first takes his step out of the house and starts going to school, he learns all the things from different members of the family. Children act like a robot while imitating the parents or other members of the family.
In this regard, parents and rest of the family members need to be very careful so as to give positive lessons to their children and avoid any such behavior that they would not like to have in their children. If you are polite and kind to others, in most cases same quality might be transferred to your children but if you have any bad habit, your child would be the first person to acquire it as well.
Whenever I see a child or teenager with very polite and noble qualities, I salute his or her parents as the credit definitely goes to the parents who worked hard to bring up the child like this. In the same way, when children develop bad habits, parents are responsible for this bad situation as well.
The other day, I saw a verse written on the rear-window of a taxi that can be translated like this, "Love and affection can turn a thorn into a flower". This is equally applicable when you notice or discover some bad habits in your child. When a pimple comes out on your hand, you cannot cure it by cutting it away as it is also a part of your body and even if you cut it, it gets worse. The best way to cure such a pimple is to do some hard work. You take it to a dermatologist, buy cream for it, then regularly clean it and apply cream on it.
You apply the cream with all the attention and this language of attention or rubbing is even understood by animals like cats and dogs and they come close to you and start listening to you. Similarly, if you want to remove a bad habit from the personality of your child and make him free of this problem, you need to show patience, give proper attention and regularly use the rubbing or caressing language of love and kindness. Then the thorn that has developed in the personality of a child would definitely turn into a flower.
Due or justified appreciation and praise is considered to be the very important tool of teaching according to the modern educational guidelines and teachers are directed to use it very efficiently and generously to develop sound and polite attitudes in the students.
This is a tool that can be equally utilized by the parents to promote the acceptable or good behaviors. When a child does something good and is appreciated by the parents for this, he wants to earn the appreciation of parents by repeating the similar acts in the future.
Similarly, when you show your disagreement or disappointment on an unacceptable behavior of your child, they try to avoid such behaviors in future. The repeated usage of these reactions will establish an invisible and unwritten code of conduct according to which a child would know clearly what are acceptable or unacceptable behaviors and would always act keeping them in consideration.
Very rarely a child or a youngster is seen who shows his unique qualities just because he was directed to do so by either of the parents, a teacher, an elder or even a good book and he is very much considerate about keeping his words or following the guidelines being provided to him by his father or mother.
This situation happens when one is too much close to his parents and a kind of relationship has been developed that both the parties take too much care of each other. Though it cannot be proved by any scientific evidence or justification but it can be said that in our hearts and minds, we have a lot many chemicals that remain busy in chemical reactions.
When we have too much understanding with someone, we can say that our brain or body chemicals also come to recognize each other. So when one kind of chemical reaction occurs in the mind or body of a person, similar signals are transmitted or being received in the body and mind of the other person as well and there is established an invisible link between the minds and bodies of these two persons.
When this link is established, both the parties are able to receive the feelings and expectations of each other and thus they do those things that are supported by both the parties and avoid those that are not liked by either of them. This is a very ideal situation and we need to work with our children to develop such a mental communication.