Is there really a point in over-parenting, hyper-parenting, micro-parenting or whatever else we choose to call it? It’s time to introspect what is that truly matters in the end.
When I die and when someone reads my eulogy (I hope), I know what I want included in it – I want them to say how I will be missed, I want it to recollect how many people loved me, I want them to read out how my life wasn’t a wasted one and so on.
What will matter in the end is, how many lives I touched, how many tears I wiped, how many laughs I shared, or how many meaningful conversations I had.
This I believe is something most of us would want as well.
So, when it comes to our children why do we think this tenet won’t apply?
How do you think, several decades down the line, they would be remembered by their future generations?
“Oh! he was the class monitor in Grade I, and she got the all-rounder certificate in Grade III, and in Grade V he got a merit badge, and she secured first position in four inter-house competitions while in Grade VII, and he stood first in tenth board in the entire state, and she secured a six figure salary offer right out of college” Really? This is how trivial we want to turn their lives into? How inane or how unmeaningful will this sound?
Are these the only things we want our children to be remembered for?
We all can hear ourselves uttering an audible big NO to this question. Yet here we are, running after these exact things since the day our children boarded the school bus on their first day of school.
We are all running behind the highest grade, the topmost position; and if not in academics we want our child to be the greatest orator, the fastest athlete, the agilest dancer – the supreme winner. And what’s our unbeatable argument – we are doing it for them!
We are bringing them up to be superlative achievers, but we refuse to develop or even believe in a yardstick for kindness, politeness, courteousness, compassion, generosity, etiquette – the very values which weave the moral fabric of this society & humanity at large.
All around us we see academic achievers who are turning into mean competitors, there are award winners who visibly disrespect their parents, there are graceful dancers with no regard for elderly, brilliant debaters who couldn’t care less for the environment.
One might argue that the world in which we were raised, isn’t the same in which we are raising our children – they need to be tough, fight out, be competitive, speak up. Agreed. But we fail to distinguish between being tough and being a bully, fighting out and starting a fight, being competitive to being envious, and speaking up to talking back.
While running this race for so long we have forgotten what it means to be raised a human and what it truly means to raise true humans. Let’s remember, rat race is only for rats, and dog fight is only for dogs. Humans are supposed to have evolved from that stage a long-long time ago.
So, mothers (& fathers), let us find a hobby other than our kids. Cause who will we indulge, how will we engage ourselves when they leave the nest? And if none of this works for you, just visualize – we (& they) are a mere speck of dust in this cosmos of millions of galaxies, billions of solar systems, and trillions of planets. This should at least put things in perspective of what should truly matter.
Comments