“Love, compassion, and tolerance are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
These simple words of His Holiness the Dalai Lama hold a world of truth and wisdom for me. More so because every single day of my life as a mother, this is required from me, and often I find myself on the brink of failure. It is so hard to hang on to these finer feelings in the face of tantrums, fighting, whining, diaper changes, sleepless nights, feeding routines, ... I can go on and on. Let me tell you something about myself – well actually, it's everything, because being a parent is my life now! I have three children, aged nine, five and two, (I can see you all just shaking your heads in understanding and sympathy!) Well, I used to feel the same way about myself. But over time,(and lots of reading, workshops and introspection), I have discovered that my children are the greatest source of joy in this world for me, and I want to give myself the opportunity to experience it.
Imagine the confusion a little soul has to experience right from the time of birth! From a warm, safe environment, it is pushed out into a world full of bright lights, strange noises and smells, and sensations of hunger and thirst! From that time onwards to about the age of seven, life is all about adjusting and surviving within the family structure. Their basic needs of food, warmth and security are primary, and if they are met in a loving and kind way, the children feel a sense of belongingness and security. The small baby does not see himself as being separate, but feels the family to be an extension of himself. If we fail to respond to these needs, the world becomes a scary and unpredictable place for our children. They will then tend to see grown-ups, especially parents, as unreliable and not to be trusted!
We want our children to be emotionally strong and independent, but when they cry for prolonged periods, or feel scared in a dark room, or we've been away from them for a long time, our comforting voice and warm embrace can work wonders. They need our hug, our loving touch at such times. Touch is a basic need of all humans, even animals do it naturally. It is form of communication, one that cannot be put into words. As adults, we often want and need to be touched, and couples often complain of neglect in this part of their relationship. Yet, we hold back as parents, afraid to produce a 'softie'. Or sometimes we are just too busy or irritable or simply uncaring. Research has shown that children who are denied physical contact develop slowly at all levels- physical, mental, emotional, even spiritual. This is the reason, many of the ancient and indigenous cultures used the 'kangaroo philosophy'- having their small infants strapped to their mothers' bodies. Touch goes deeper than just a physical sensation. It is a sharing of our energy fields, which brings about a harmony which has profound healing properties. How much stronger it would be coming from a loving parent!
“Breathing in, I know my dear one is in my arms, alive. Breathing out, she is so precious to me.” - Thich Nhat Hanh's 'Hugging Meditation'.

My Child - A Genius?!

Have you ever noticed how some children's eyes light up when they listen to a good song and start singing along, while others just start swaying to the beat of the music? How some love to spend hours on drawing and painting little 'cards' for you and their friends, while others love to make little boats and other shapes with paper or clay? How some of them love to tap to the beat of some inaudible music with spoons or pencils, while others get deeply engrossed in playing 'air guitar'? How some children love to play outdoors, while some love to stay indoors and read or write poetry and stories filled with flights of fantasy?
Why do all children have something that they love to do more than others, and they can spend hours doing that? What is that gives them that concentration, focus, and above all, that great joy spreading across their faces and a great peace surrounds them, even as their little fingers and minds are working at a furious pace? They are just 'expressing' themselves. They have discovered their 'expression' in any of these activities and this brings them joy and fulfillment.
We smilingly watch them do this and indulgently 'allow' them to carry on for some time. We often make reference to our children's active imaginations; we accept that they are creative; or note that they seem to be naturally curious and playful. But soon enough, our concerns for their future and their careers kick in, and we become anxious. We immediately transmit this stress to them by scolding them for 'wasting' precious time, time which could have been more constructively used in 'studying'. Our concentration on academics per se is so dominant that we frown upon and discourage any interest displayed by our children outside this.
Our children are a collection of hidden impulses that need to be expressed, understood and controlled. Many children are talented in so many fields but most parents and teachers consider those talents 'unproductive' as career goals. Children gradually lose interest in those activities and their talents get buried along with their self-worth and potential. Children are rebuked for not bringing 'good' marks in academics, while good performance in non-academic or creative acts is written off as wasteful 'play'.
But to make children high performers, we, as parents and teachers, have to realize that by igniting the child's artistic brain, we inevitably stimulate the academic brain to perform better. Until this realization takes root in our minds, schooling will continue to be a tedious exercise for all concerned. Our focus should be on the child's capacity for constructive growth and creative potential at the highest levels of functioning. Focus should be on providing opportunities for our children to explore.
Creative activities can positively affect a child's reasoning, thinking skills and spatial intelligence. They can affect test scores, raise energy levels, improve reading and writing skills, aid in learning and retaining new material, promote coordinated body movement, and take creativity to a higher level. We need to touch our children's emotions by introducing activities that appeal to their feelings and to their 'right brain'– activities that the child responds to naturally.
Activities like music, rhymes, song, dance, drawing, painting, clay modelling, role-play, dramatics, concerts, catch-ball, yoga, aerobics, hopping, skipping, jogging, juggling, and numerous other fun-filled activities their active, teeming minds can think of. These activities stimulate the complex structure of the brain, encouraging both brain 'centres' to work in consonance with each other. This helps them to experience a greater integrated balance throughout their lives.
By having the freedom to 'express' themselves through any creative pursuit, our children can lead richer, more vibrant and fulfilling lives. Some of them can even turn them into wonderful career opportunities. It is our duty and responsibility to let our children explore and develop their potential in whatever they 'love' to do. We can help them in this way to have more 'complete' and integrated personalities. If their desires and dreams are not thwarted, but encouraged, they will be confident, well-balanced individuals, and whatever they do in lives after that, they are sure to leave their impressions for posterity.

Wednesday is Art. My favourite day. Or used to be until the cornflowers.
Ten cornflowers in a jar. I loved them. Burning blue. Impatient to be begin
I scoured my paintbox. Cobalt. Azure and Prussian Blue. I mixed them well,
and laid them on my page, and saw the flowers bloom beneath my brush.
I showed my friend. “Dad grows these in our garden. Mum's special flower,
The colour of her eyes.” The teacher pounced. “Time to talk? No need to work?
Perhaps you'll show us what you've done?” She held my painting to the class,
While I sat proudly by. But then, “Now children look at this,” she said,
“And learn how NOT to paint. Jenny calls them flowers. But what do we see?
Just ten green sticks in a crooked jar, and ten awful blobs of horrible blue.”
Wednesday is always Art. It was my favourite day,
But now, if I can manage it, I try to stay away.

Going through my son's book, as I read these lines by Jenny Craig, I was transported back to a time when I was a young student, about five or six years of age, small in size but big on dreams. I imagined myself being a famous painter, an accomplished pianist, a brilliant ballet/kathak dancer, a world-class singer, a legendary astronaut, ....! The list was endless. One of the things I fancied the most was drawing and painting. I would look forward to my art class. I would arrange my art notebook, crayons and paint-box neatly in my bag, and always left it there, just in case my teacher decided to have an impromptu art lesson! But soon, I lost interest in the class and I slowly, unconsciously, let go of my dream to be a famous artist.
As I look back, what I recollect is the fact that there were so many set rules for the class. Right from choosing the object or model that we had to draw, the way it had to be drawn, the colours we had to use, the size and shape it had to be, the kind of pencil, brush, paints we had to use, every little thing was pre-decided by the teacher. We just had to copy what was on the blackboard or on the teacher's desk, within the given parameters. The sun had to be a certain shade of orange or yellow (usually not the ones I visualized!), the trees, the river, the hut, the mountains, the birds, everything had to look the same as everybody else's! Wow! Isn't that incredible! We could make such brilliant reproductions of our teacher's artwork, we were almost an art factory! And we actually got marked on our fine reproductions, and received lots of praise from our respective parents and relatives!
And that is the day, art, creativity, imagination, emotion, individual thinking and expression, all died a sad death. And there was none the wiser for it, because we were all living up to our parents' and teachers' artistic image of us. It has been said so many times, more than one can remember, that when “The Scenery” of all the children in a class looks exactly the same, creativity is dead! Drawing the unique shape of an apple, in all its wondrous shades of green or red, as it's ripeness and juiciness almost jumps out of the page at us, NO, It's just not Allowed! Anyway, wasn't it just a hobby class, something we had to fit in among the more important language, math and science classes? Who needs great artists, we should only be great doctors, engineers, scientists, accountants, .... That list is also endless!
But those were the days, when we were very young, early in our lives, bursting with creative ideas, longing to express ourselves, it was then that we learned that we could and should not be thinking people. We have to reproduce others' thoughts, revisit others' places of creativity, re-walk the paths trodden by many before us, and re-create, re-assemble and re-organize others' creativity and originality into the new package of non-thinking, non-creative, unoriginal, anonymous people, that is us. We have been very successful,too, in becoming these individuals without any individuality!
The question now that I want to raise is, “Aren't we doing the same to our children?” What, then, does the future look like? I leave you with this food for thought.
Love and God bless.

TAKING BACK OUR ROLE

When I was a child, I thought to myself, “I can be a better parent and teacher than the ones I have.” Just to live up to my words has been such an uphill task, I now have a new-found respect and admiration for my parents, my teachers and everyone who is remotely associated with bringing up a child! For haven't we made all efforts to be effective parents? It has become an increasingly difficult struggle and we begin to lose our confidence.
I see a great need for parents to believe in themselves again and we need to learn how to regain our confidence and reclaim our rightful parental role as teachers to our children. For this we have to understand that we have forgotten our primary parental responsibility: It is to teach. We must teach our children not only to read and write, to do math, to pick up after themselves, but also principles and values, like how to respect themselves and others, be polite, responsible and happy.
We usually find ourselves either doing too much or too little for our children, or doing it at the wrong time. Although our intentions are well-meant, those of us who do too much to make life easy for our children, are crippling them by robbing them of the skills they will need to provide for themselves in the real world.We buy them everything they ask for, we do their homework, we give them no responsibility for chores. Then we wonder why they are so unmotivated, unproductive, morose and unhappy.
We profess to them that we have confidence in them, but our actions tell them differently. By doing everything for them, we are unwittingly convincing them that they are not capable enough and that struggle is to be avoided. But it is this struggle to reach goals, and the effort it takes to make dreams come true, is what gives real value to those goals and dreams. We are taking away their right to struggle for and own those rewards. We are turning them into self-indulgent individuals, incapable of taking on the realities of adulthood.
Those of us who do too little for our children also cripple them by robbing them of their childhood. We take away the magic, the wonder and discovery of being a child and force them into taking on adult responsibilities too soon. We are trying to prepare them for a harsh world, but leaving them with no real opportunity to just be children. Physically or emotionally, when we make our children's lives too hard, they want to avoid any other kind of struggle. Even as adults, they continually search for the childhood they never had, and they lose the incentive to struggle or have worthwhile goals and dreams. They are unable to believe in their own possibilities and resign themselves to failure and unhappiness.
Those of us in the third category, who are confused about when and how much to do, need to find the balance between the two. The best of our intentions alone will not raise a child. We need to let the results of our actions be the yardstick for measuring what and how much we need to change to achieve these goals.
But whichever category we find ourselves in, there is hope. But the parent's role is one that must be earned. To earn it, we must actually do the work. We must make the effort to change and practice. Stay positive!