Three Basic Portions Of Parenting

How often  have we heard people around us say that "this child isn’t brought up properly” or “this child’s behavior reflects his upbringing”. People love giving free advice, “do this” and “do that” even if they don't even know the child. Whenever something is wrong with the child, the needles automatically point straight to the upbringing methods and parents are to blame.People seldom remember that each child is a different individual and hence different in terms of their behavior pattern. There is no set pattern of parenting that a parent can adopt, isn’t it? There is no standard global parenting method till now; of course someone may come up with one later. But until then we need to know that parenting styles are vastly governed by our cultures and hence there are no fixed rules for it.Which ever parenting path you tread you mainly need to a strike a fine balance between three aspects.

Like when we say Nurturing, we have to respond to our children in certain ways in our day to day lives. We can nurture in many ways like listening attentively to the children, spending time with them, by being available to them and giving them attention when they do things that need appreciation. Nurturing is extremely essential act which helps children to feel safe,  protected, cared for and children will  then easily accept the discipline.

When we talk about Disciplining it comprises putting down and enforcing rules or limits on children. Of course the rules must be clear, reasonable, just and at times flexible. The emphasis should be on “what to do” instead of “what not to do”. Monitoring and guiding the children, preventing misbehavior and rewarding good behavior helps in promoting discipline .

Respecting may sound very trivial, but what we need to understand is that children often are not to articulate many things so we need to talk with them, not at them and handle their fragile minds with care. We can also respect them by giving them age appropriate responsibilities, trust that they will be responsible and slowly empower them.

First as a parent we need to understand our child in depth and depending on the child we need to take a child centric approach.  The numbers of the factors above can vary depending on age situation and at different points in life. But what we need to realize is that we cannot expect a child to be born an adult. We need them to slowly mould into the individual we aspire them to be and for that we have to be the artesan.

Remember always let any one say anything, you judge your own child and let not others judge them. Understand that parenting is not a formula that you can apply easily or overnight. It is contextual long drawn process and balancing it is just like a trapeze act!