Mindful Parenting

Being a parent is demanding! A child’s life is quite happy until middle school. But when children reach class 8 or 9, parents start worrying about the college education. At this age, children become somewhat independent and they start exploring about the possible career choices and colleges.  I have been teaching teens for more than two decades and also have a 20-year-old son. For the last several years, I have been getting a lot of queries from parents of children of various ages. My younger sister and brother who are based in Mumbai have a teenage son each. I keep hearing various stories from them. Once my sister said, why don’t you have a parenting workshop? This got me into thinking. I started looking at me as a mother* and a teacher.  Through this came the idea of a workshop for parents called “Mindful parenting”!

These are some of the questions and remarks that come to me from people around.

·         Which is the best school/college or course for my son/daughter?

·         My son wants to go to IIT? How can we prepare him?

·         How to cultivate a habit of reading?

·         My son hates math and his grades are terrible! Please help!

·         How much should I teach my teenage son?

·         My daughter is unable to focus on studies. She looks tired and depressed most of the time!

·         My son does not help with housework. He is constantly on the phone!

·         Should I monitor my son or my daughter constantly?

·         My son has an excessive attraction towards branded items which I don’t really have.

·         My daughter is 14 and has a boyfriend. The school keeps calling me for meetings! What should I do?

I have been exploring mindfulness with my husband Vinay Dabholkar. I felt, most of our adult life is spent in parenthood. It is important to connect the two. What is mindful parenting?   Around the same time,  I was inspired by Dr. Shefaly Tsabury’s book titled The Conscious Parent. This touched my heart. Here is an important quote from her

“When you parent, it’s crucial you realize you aren’t raising a “mini me,” but a spirit throbbing with its own signature. For this reason, it’s important to separate who you are from who each of your children is. Children aren’t ours to possess or own in any way.  – Dr. Shefaly Tsabury

As I was reading it, several examples came alive in front of my eyes. Most of the time, we are in a process of fulfilling our dreams through our children. We think that we are molding their lives and we are doing everything for our children’s future. However, it is hard to see that these are our desires. Being mindful parent means being aware of what is happening around you and watching our own state of mind at all time. But how can we do it? Is it possible? To explain this, I am going to give examples from my life when I was not a mindful parent.

Most of my life, I was a complete control freak. I wanted my classes, my office space, my house and family for everything to be the best possible. Here are two incidents from my parenting experience. When my son was very small, I used to take him to different classes. One of them was the abacus class. As a dutiful mother, I paid the fees for 2 months- around 2500 Rs. This was back in 2004 and was a big amount for a little boy’s math class. The teacher gave him a packet of books and an abacus. She showed him how to use it. He was supposed to do 100 sums in 2 days. Her intention may have been good and the method may have worked for several other children. He tried to complete a page on the first day. But he was in tears. He was overwhelmed. There was no abacus after that. The abacus is still lying in his drawer. He was not very great in multiplication tables or simple additions in the early years, but his math grades have always been good even in the college! It was painful for me to accept that he was not doing the sums. At that time I was feeling bad. Now when I look back I notice that not going abacus class did not leave any lacuna in his learning.

Another incident was during an Indian Robotics Olympiad when he was 10 years old. He used to love making robots with Lego. I enrolled him for the Olympiad. Until the day of the competition, he would make different kinds of robots but the challenge in the competition was very specific and he was struggling. I pushed him a lot over the last two days. I was sitting with him and monitoring all the moves of the robot. He won a silver medal but the stress of competition was far more than the enjoyment that he would otherwise have got while building stuff with Lego! This episode taught me a lot.  I have kept these experiences in mind until now.  Although these were bitter experiences, they helped me to guide him in later classes.

Fast Forward 10 years … He is a passionate classical guitarist and wants to focus on his music while pursuing a degree in another subject. Based on his grades and earlier hobbies we had thought that he would take up a career in engineering but he chose to study pure science and math. We supported him and he seems to be managing well for the last two years.

As a parent, it is extremely important to realize what the real strengths and weaknesses of your child are.  How can we find out what the strengths are? Many parents feel that their children are rather mediocre. They tend to focus on the school grades and competitions only. How can one decide upon the courses?

This is a perennial question that comes to me from most of the parents. Let us investigate this whole thing about Cause and effect- Does a best school or college lead to a successful life?

Recently, I watched this Hindi film called “Hindi Medium”. It is a story of clothing merchant from Chandani Chauk and his wife Mita who want their daughter Pia to be admitted to the best school. She is an insecure mother who lets herself fall prey to the fear of failure instilled in her by society and the educational institutes. If my daughter doesn’t admission to Delhi Grammar School, she will not able to speak good English. She won’t get into the best college, she will stay behind, she will be under depression and she will start taking drugs. The inconvenient truth today is that drugs can happen in any college or high schools.

I have seen several students in top schools not enjoying the school, unable to cope up with pressure and falling behind. An elite school which charges exorbitant fees may not be the best school for your child. The quality of teachers may be better than an average school but there is no guarantee that your child will like the lessons. How do we make big decisions about schools, colleges, and career?

In the next blogs, we will see the basic principles of being a mindful parent and how we can raise happy, responsible, energetic children?

Photo Credit: DNA India