Parenting is an art- Indian Parenting- Part II

Making the child own his/her actions

It is important to realise that roots of Indian culture still vibrates in its families and social-cultural values. Children must remain in emotional touch of grand parents and other members of the family. Good and positive emotional health brings complete growth of the child. It adds to immunity, resilience and adaptability. Parents who are vigilant, observant and careful are the source of emotional upbringing for the child. Emotional upbringing necessarily means to cultivate values like modesty, concern, trustworthiness, empathy, honesty, commitment, accountability, etc. These become the core values for him/her to lead his/her happy and healthy life. Lack of values becomes source of negative traits. The child who disowns his/her actions continuously in the childhood, is less likely to develop the values of accountability, commitment, honesty or trust in his later life and those become cause of concern for him/her. 

A new study published in Developmental Psychology examined lying in two and three-year-old children and some of the cognitive skills involved with deception.   Conducted by Angela Evans of Brock University and Kang Lee of the University of Toronto, the study used a series of executive functioning and verbal tasks as well as two deception tasks to measure lying behaviour.  

Based on their results, the authors suggested that children as young as two years old were capable of spontaneous lying and that lying behaviour rose dramatically by the time they were three years old.   The authors also suggested that this was not because younger children were more honest but that they were less able to carry out the complex cognitive tasks that went into telling lies.   In other words, children with better cognitive ability are capable of telling better lies.    All of which implies that lying is as much a developmental milestone as any other cognitive task (if not the sort that parents are likely to brag about). But developing a skill of lying by any means can not be justified in the name of the milestone. Let the child own his/her action and learn in the process, other varied characteristic features. 

But is lying always negative?   It's tempting to argue that lying is also linked to creativity since the ability to create fiction often relies on the same cognitive skills that go into telling a successful lie.   As children develop in their cognitive capacity, the ability to balance more than one reality in their head (which is what liars do when they create a fictional version of events to match with the truth) becomes easier.   It also means being able to recognize the difference between fiction and reality, much like what they watch on television as well as being able to create new stories. So parent's need to be cautious about all these studies because you as a parent is "NOT" preparing your child for a fiction.

However, it is important to understand that lying can not be judged in isolation. Child develops core values in tandem. These are interconnected, overlapping and need to be developed through proper parenting. 

How do I know that my child does not own his/her action?

• The child hides the facts whenever he/she has not completed the task. S/he may cook stories well built to hide that fact. In such cases you need to be vigilant and keep on asking very politely. One should never resort to punishment to infuse correction. Punishment encourages the child to lie.
• The child will avoid face-to-face contact, realising that he/she has to own an action which he/she did not.
• The child will immediately shift the ownership of task to someone else, not present in the scene.

You need to be vigilant, observant and at the same time modest, polite, loving, caring but strict to take guard of actions of your child.

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Parenting is an art- Indian Parenting- Part I

Parenting per se seems to be a usual task as we normally do other routines in our life. It is not so?? I believe that parenting is the university in itself. Grooming someone to become a responsible citizen in life cannot happen by chance. It has to be designed SMART meaning thereby ( S) with a specific purpose in mind, (M) measurable goals (what he or she is going to attain as per his/her capabilities and calibre), (A), attainable objectives (how she or he is going to achieve those objectives in a given time frame), (R) relevant to one’s likes (it is NOT the parent's choice to make him/her so and so, but it is his/her liking to become so and so.) and (T) time bound. This becomes the responsibility of the parents to design the path of life of the child together rather than imposing one's whims and wishes onto the child. Unfortunately neither parents nor schools are able to design the path of development of the child resulting in chaos and confusion.

Especially in Indian traditions where joint families still exist, a child grows amidst care and concern of the senior members of the family. The senior members of the family observe the growth of child very affectionately with emotional enrichment of relations, whether it is mother-child or father-child or mother-father. Thus a presence of a grand father or a grand mother makes a great difference in cultivating the much needed values of life. 

This is an important factor in determining how the child deals with the people outside the family. The Indian parenting style builds the mutual respect and trust for other people, their values and customs. Indian parents believe strongly that their child is part of a family and a community and that it is of prime importance that the child realizes that every decision she makes and every action she takes has consequences for the entire family and community. 

The world of parenting has changed in urban India to a large extent because of economic constraints and life-style management. This has great impact on nurturing values. In order that child grows up with results, parents put pressure on every aspect of child’s life. They expectations are often guided by fanatics of physical targets; those may not be true to capabilities of the child. As a result the child stays dependent on his parents for almost a quarter of his life. From the kind of clothes kids wear to the stream they choose in school or college, everything is decided by their parents. And this does not simply end here. The selection of the college, course, city of work and even the spouse hugely depends on their parents’ decisions, if not entirely, to a great extent. This ultimately creates lot of anxious moments for the child in his life. The child is groomed in wrong direction. The situation is changing in cities now as people started realising the negative aspects of poor parenting.

It is important to realise that roots of Indian culture still vibrates in its families and social-cultural values. Children must remain in emotional touch of grand parents and other members of the family. There is an eminent need of training young parents on parenting style. Inculcating values can only happen through responsible parents. Values are the much needed asset today. Lack of values means misdirected growth. Unfortunately the seats of learning like schools and colleges do not inculcate values by design. What they really develop is a matter of research. In such cases, parents need to be a lot vigilant, observant and cautious about their wards.

The five most important values that will impact the larger part of life of the child are.

1.     Making the child own his/her actions

2.     Developing an attitude of inquiry.

3.     Make him/her learn “the gratitude of getting”.

4.     Teach the child “the value of money”.
5.     Developing an attitude of "learning to learn".

We will discuss this in more detail with episodes that how a good parenting requires to design a parenting guide for your own family.