PRESSING THE RIGHT BUTTONS IN CHILDREN

From Sampath’s Desk:

 

 

PRESSING THE RIGHT BUTTONS IN CHILDREN

Role of Parents and Teachers

 

To be a parent is one of the most beautiful gifts that married life offers. It brings lots of joy along with of course an added responsibility called 'parenting'! Maintaining an atmosphere of nurturing and caring is an art in itself and requires a lot of effort from both the parents. Let us look into some of the key issues of parenting.

 

Three Important questions we need to ask ourselves as parents: 1. “Are our children just staying or happily living at home?” 2. “Do we have the confidence and conviction that our children will share and confide in all that they do in their life?” 3. “Will we be comfortable to know about what our children are doing, from a third party?”

 

Parents and children today often complain that they don’t understand each other. All parents compare their children with their peers. Please don't' do that. For, it will give scope for widening the gap between parents and children further.

 

Education confers enlightenment and empowerment. A strong foundation is laid in students for their right attitude and aptitude in schools/colleges. However, real power and wisdom lie in ‘being able to make the right choice’ – good or evil, righteous or wicked, moral or immoral, ethical or unethical, soft or harsh, optimistic or pessimistic, disciplined or undisciplined, amiable or grouchy, civilized or savagery, loyal or treacherous, serious or carefree/careless, etc. A right-thinking person would obviously settle for the former. Here arises the need for value-based education and moral lessons for giving a right mould to children enabling them to grow into dutiful future citizens.

Maxime Lagacé said, “Tell me what’s more important than being present for your children and listening to them.”

 

Education is generally considered by children and parents alike, as a short-cut exit route for an affluent life rather than the beginning of a continuous journey that takes the whole lifetime. Many students see schools/colleges as a challenging ground rather than a training ground. Out of over-zeal, they try to convince their peers and teachers of their superiority in knowledge, least realizing that whatever one may have learnt is just the tip of an iceberg. For some, to admit ignorance is shameful!

 

On the brighter side, children are asset to parents, family, and society, forming the fountainhead of posterity. However, some rich parents have a flawed notion that children would grow on their own due to their affluence. They are mistaken. They miserably fail to note that a child of parents – rich or poor – more than money and material intensely yearns for love and affection. We have to invest everything of ours in our children. For, they are the future of our family, society, and the nation at large. More than anything else, they need the parents to share some time with them. Some parents especially fathers don’t realize it. Monotony, ennui, and drudgery in a child’s life, thanks to mounds of books, notes, study materials, etc. they live and do with, may make boredom to set in their life. They, therefore, need diversion and parents’ love and affection through practical pastimes. The weekends may be the ideal time for the otherwise busy parents. With mothers also employed nowadays, children feel the pinch more. In case the mother is a home-maker, the father invariably thinks it is the entire responsibility of his spouse to bring up the children. This is a wrong notion. Father is as much important to a child as the mother. Time with their beloved parents would get their vigour recouped, spirits refurbished and joy heightened.

 

The thumb rule is that the best inheritance the parents can give their children is a few minutes of their time each day. Besides physical interactions, play, and fun-making, children should be taught how to think, but not necessarily what to think? Don’t put something in their brain and impose it on them. It is said that good parents are your luck, but a bad child is your mistake. Jane D Hull observed, "At the end of the day, the most overwhelming key to a child’s success is the positive involvement of parents."

 

On the flip side, there is nothing worse than a man who can be everything to everybody else except a father to his own child. A harassed child sits backbench in a state of trance. An abused child may think ‘offence is the best defence’ and slip into an unhealthy, undesirable, and evil path. A paranormal incident in which a teacher was killed by one of her own students was perhaps the fallout of misjudging, misapprehending, misinterpreting and disastrous mindset propelled by a trail of events that might have prompted the child to what he did. Just as there are laws of physics and chemistry, there are laws of good action and bad action too. Evil action will bring bad results and good actions must give good results, sooner or later. This should be instilled and indoctrinated in children's minds.

    

We should allow differences to be part of our life. Tolerance is the key to purchase and maintain peace. Parents should oencourage children to celebrate the diversities with humaneness, instead of merely tolerating or bearing with them.

 

Parents and others should also recognize the generation gap more particularly the emerging changes in children and the young world i.e. complexities of mind, susceptible sensibilities, emotional contours, intricacies in transforming priorities, nuances in their thought-processes, etc., thanks to the generation divide due to efflux of time and whopping and mind-boggling advances in human lifestyles, and deal with them accordingly. Let us understand children from the right perspective and let them grow into righteous future citizens properly guided by parents, teachers and elders. 

 

Parents are the ultimate role models for children. Every word, movement, and action of theirs has an effect on children. No other person or outside force has a greater influence on a child than the parents. The golden rule of parenting is to always show your children the kind of person you want them to be. Every father should remember that one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.

 

It is said, “Students who are loved at home, come to school to learn, and students who aren’t, come to school to be loved”. Without values, education is like a paper rose without fragrance. Your words as parents have great power. Use them to support and inspire your children.

 

In this context, the role of a teacher needs no over-emphasis. The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. It is the supreme art of the best teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge. A truly special teacher is very wise and sees tomorrow in a child’s eyes.

 

Good virtues and right moral, ethical and civic values can be inculcated in students by teachers besides parents. Writers, scholars, and other elders can also pitch in here. After all, life is a continuous process of learning – from womb to tomb.

 

Without teachers, life would have no class. A good teacher is like a candle – it consumes itself to light the way for others. Brad Henry defined teachers in the following words, “A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” They are not just teachers. They are the managers of the world’s greatest resource and asset – CHILDREN.

 

A discerning teacher teaches children to love learning. You think you’re just a teacher but if you ask your students, they would say that you (a life-changing guide and Guru) are a STAR and HERO to them.

 

True teachers allow themselves to be used as bridges by their students to cross it over. Then, having facilitated their crossing joyfully collapse it, encouraging the students to create a bridge on their own to majestically enter the path of life and ready themselves for life challenges.

 

Ever Garrison said, “The teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge and wisdom in the pupils.”

 

Teachers can change lives with just the right mix of chalk and challenges. Not everyone has the patience of a saint, a heart of gold, and unceasing dedication, but an excellent teacher has it all. The best teacher teaches from the heart, not from the books. The best teachers don’t simply give you the answers. They make students find them on their own. 

 

If there is a question why anyone would ever like to become a teacher with fondness, tell them why it’s worth doing? Any job has its ups and downs, and merits and demerits, but not every job can positively change another’s life. The best teachers are those who keep their students challenged, motivated, inspired, and flourishing in their life once they grow up. Better than a thousand days of diligent study on your own is one day with a great teacher. The best teacher opens the mind and touches the heart of his/her students.

 

Good teachers know that it takes a big heart to train and shape the little minds. The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom well into the future of his/her students without them even knowing it. When encomiums and accolades profusely come from the students who had settled down in their life at a later stage, the teacher concerned will have a pleasant shock taking him/her into nostalgic navigation. Such teachers would not even have known about their own potentials and value, and the important role played by them in a student’s school/college life. Hearing it from the student's mouth, the teacher concerned would feel delighted, elated, excited, and even ecstatic at times.

 

The job of a good teacher is not to shape up students in their own image, but to develop them enabling them to create an image of their own. A teacher thus plays the much-needed facilitative role in the lives of students in their seminal stages of life.

 

Morals lessons can be related to students during classroom teaching, whatever may be the subject dealt with at that time. Lectures can be made appealing by interspersing here and there small interesting anecdotes and tidbits so that children would curiously lend their ears. Despite the subject of History being essentially about past events/stories, our Class X history teacher used to teach us dotting and peppering his lectures with good tidbits/anecdotes soaked in humour that mesmerized us to listen to him with rapt attention and dumb-stricken till the bell chimed marking the end of his period. His would be interesting, exciting, and absorbing sessions for us.

On the role of a teacher, Swami Vivekananda said, “The teacher is more than my own father, and I am truly his child, his son in every respect.”

  

R.SAMPATH

30/1/2021