Values – How they shape one’s life?

Values are the fundamental forces that drive our lives.

“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same. But you leave them all over everything you do.” – Elvis Presley

“Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.” - Stephen Covey

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” – Roy Disney

 

“What is the value that is most important to me?” is a question what each one of us should be asking ourselves. Once there is a clarity in what our values are it becomes easier for us to make decisions. Values guide us through our lives as they are our fundamental beliefs and every action or non-action is guided by them.

When asked about my values, I realized that independence was most important for me. The need for financial independence came in a little early. As years went by, I realized the need for physical independence as well towards the last stages of my life.

The desire for financial independence drove me to engage myself continuously in earning propositions. It guided me to be prudent in spending and hence accumulate savings. It motivated me to explore different investment avenues. It taught me to analyse risk-reward metrics of an investment opportunity.

Values play an important part in the course of parenting as well. Apart from personal values, there can be family values as well. Inculcation of family values in children can be achieved through discussions and demonstration by the parents. Decisions have to be guided through values and demonstrated through actions continuously. This will set the children on a path, which is more decisive and has greater clarity.

So, what values are important to you – a personal level and at family level?

Respect others’ preferences

Each one of us has our own tastes and preferences for everything on earth. They are “our” preferences. But at times we fail to see others’ preferences objectively. What we like is sometimes so important to us that we wrinkle our nose at the other person’s choice of the same stuff. We are thinking, “How can you even think of owning that stuff? It is horrible. The colour is gawdy. You should have gone for a different colour (meaning the colour that suits my taste)”. We cannot seem to understand how the other person made the choice that is not to your liking. In the process, we have hurt the person and made them conscious of their choice.

It is bad etiquette and insensitive to express a dislike to the food that the other person is eating. We have to understand that her palette is different from ours. We are putting up a selfish behaviour even if we comment that we don’t like the stuff. There has to be a “live and let live” philosophy. “You can have your potatoes everyday – I won’t comment on the ill-effects of doing so. Do not comment on me enjoying my bottle gourd, just because you don’t enjoy the taste and the texture. I don’t even want to hear that you don’t like it.”

I respect your preference, you respect mine.

Parenting#10 - Overparenting

Overparenting is when parents are deeply involved (mostly unnecessarily) in the day-to-day lives of their children. Their objective is to shield their children from discomforts and failure type of situations These parents want to make everything comfortable for their children and do not want their child to endure any kind of “hardship”.

During one of the workshops, I had conducted for children in my library, a parent was highly indignant that her child was made to sit on a mat on the floor (even though there were other kids seated with him). “My child is not used to sitting on the floor”, she said.

By giving comforts such as travelling by air-conditioned vehicles, sitting throughout the day in air-conditioned rooms, not travelling by public vehicles – all these hinder the children from developing a good “immune” system. They become intolerant to a less clean environment and are not willing to commute with strangers. In the process they lose out on enjoying small joys of childhood.

Traveling by train for 17 hours or more was a sheer joy in childhood days. Reading the name of the stations, imitating the different vendors, listening to the “trrring” of the cold-drink seller, trying to use the wash room which is constantly shaking, making new friends during the journey, buying books/comics at the station of departure, reading while cuddled up on the top berth – all these are small joys which are irreplaceable. Instead, we are now travelling by air so that we get a cleaner and a less noisy environment. We are ready to endure the restricted space and movement, but we feel dignified.

We have to let our children go through filth, so that they can come out shining. We have to let them fall down and get hurt so that they can get up victorious. We have to let them handle their day-to-day tiffs with their friends so that they can emerge healthier emotionally. Let them upset their digestive system once in a while, they will end up having a stronger gut.

Remember that we are preparing them for life. Life can throw many things at them, which we cannot foresee. Once we expose them to the real world, we are equipping them to handle their own situations. We have to play the long game.

Parenting #9 - Overindulgence

Overparenting is a phenomenon which was widely prevalent from 2000 till about 2015. Overparenting refers to the situation when parents overindulge their children in their demands.

The reason for this is that these parents have had restricted childhood. Their parents told a “no” a greater number of times than a “Yes”. Moreover, salary levels, in general, had increased across board, over what their parents were earning. These two factors were the main forces behind the overindulgence. The thought process was “I could not have it as a child. I want my child to have it”. This is without taking into consideration whether the child is really in need for it. If a child demands something, these parents made it a point to get him that stuff the next moment.

Here the parents need to take a pause and think through whether the child really needs it or is it just a “want”. It is not the question of affordability, but overindulging. By saying “no”, the parent is not depriving the child of basic needs. Here, it is important to distinguish between, “I want” and “I need”.

Overindulgence was also due to the peer pressure faced by the parents. A child would demand something which is priced quite high just because his friend boasted about owning it. The typical overindulging parent thinks, “Oh! If I don’t buy this for my child, he will be humiliated among his friends. Let me get this for him, so that he is comfortable among his friends.”

Saying “no” helps a child to understand that he may not get everything that he demands in life. He will learn to value and appreciate the things he owns. He will realise that he has to work hard to achieve certain things in life. Through parental guidance he can learn to handle peer pressure during his base years. In effect, he learns a lot of life skills.

It is ok to say “no’ to your child. By saying “no”, we, as parents are helping him distinguish between a want and a need. We are training him in life skills.

Parenting #8 - Emotional Wellbeing

Emotional health is important in a human being to perform better in life and to be able to give one’s fullest. So, how do we ensure that our children are emotionally healthy.

Firstly, we have to be aware of any changes in our child’s behaviour. Then, we can help our child recognise the causes that underlie the feelings that they are experiencing like anger, frustration, fear, guilt, joy and so on. By encouraging them to name and acknowledge those feelings, we help them to gain self-awareness. When we communicate with our child and share our experiences of similar emotional state, they will know that they are not alone. The child’s emotions should not be taken lightly. Instead, we have to understand where their feelings and emotions are coming from. Let them vent out their emotions. Let them cry. Give them the time and space so that they learn to deal with emotions. We can go through a self-reflection process with them. Encourage resilience. Children may have trouble accepting limitations or failures. We have to build trust by teaching them the importance of good relationships. Lastly and the most important action is to build our child’s self-esteem.

There are certain things that are given and non-negotiable that fortify the emotional development. They are unconditional love, guidance, connectedness, honesty and respecting each other’s feelings.

An emotionally healthy child is better equipped to handle various situations in her life. Give her the strong foundation.

Parenting #7 – Attitude of gratitude

 “Thank you”, “Please” and “Sorry” are the golden words which each one of us should be using frequently.

“Thank you Mommy for the awesome lunch”, says my daughter after eating every meal cooked by me. After acknowledging her thanks, I thank the Universe for giving me such a wonderful daughter who knows to appreciate things in her life and has not taken them for granted.

I would say a “thank you”, when my child helps me. This helps in two ways. One, the child understands that I appreciate her behaviour or action, that she has done something good; it hence reinforces her behaviour. Secondly, it builds the foundation for gratitude and empathy in her.

Having reflection time is one of the many ways in appreciating and being grateful for what we have and experience. A good time is at the end of the day when we can ask our child what went good or what went bad during the day. This also helps them opening up to us as they see us sharing our day’s events with them. They will realise that we are also, like them having good days and bad days and they will share their day’s events with us without any hesitation. They will also realise that there are solutions to handling difficult situations. This has a bearing on their thinking. They become solution oriented.

We should encourage them to maintain a gratitude journal. Thanking someone is a way to show our appreciation for the other person his behaviour. In certain cases, it is a way of showing that their actions are not taken for granted. Gratitude starts at home.

When something good happens in our lives, we need to count our blessings and one of the ways is to thank the universe and acknowledge that we are indeed blessed. Thanking for the food on table and the ability to enjoy our meal prior to eating a meal sets a precedence to our child to be thankful of the good things in their lives.   

Exposing our children to the lives of the less fortunate will make them realise how blessed they are. This will teach them to learn to appreciate and be thankful. At the same time empathy also builds up.

Attitude of gratitude is something our child picks up only from her surroundings and especially, from our actions. Opportunity to express gratitude is everywhere. We need to practice it everyday so that our child also gets into the habit.

Parenting #6 – Time management

Time is a limited resource and cannot be created. Everybody has 24 hours. It is the only resource which is equal for everybody. It is up to us to decide how to utilize those 24 hours.

We have to teach our child to respect other people’s time and be punctual. When we adhere to the time committed to someone, then we are teaching our child to have a time discipline. This also helps in planning and scheduling our own activities.

Drawing up calendars and schedules helps the child to manage her time more effectively. Some amount of time discipline comes to the child from school where classes are scheduled for a time period and she has to be prepared for the class.

We can help our child in setting up a schedule by sitting along with her to understand what she wants to do with her time. The activities may include playing outdoors or indoors, engaging in some hobby, watching TV or reading apart from the routine activities like eating, bathing, studying or sleeping.

Teaching your child to prioritise goes a long way in helping the child manage her time better. In fact, prioritising is a life skill.

Procrastination causes much damage to our time management. But it has to be noted that some children (and even grow up so) can work best under pressure. Procrastinating puts a time pressure on them and they perform very well. We have to lookout for the instances when procrastinating is done due to reasons like laziness or that someone else will handle the situation for them. The perils of procrastination have to be explained.

Time management is skill that most grown up adults struggle to deal with. Teaching our children to handle their time at young age will set a strong foundation for them.

Parenting #5 – Financial Prudence

There are three types of dependencies – physical, emotional and financial. When a child is born, all the dependencies exist. As the child grows up, physical dependence reduces. Emotional dependence will be there till the age of around 23-25 years of age of the child. After that the child has to be financially independent.

We have seen that children learn from parents; they mimic them. We have to encourage them to save the money received as gift. We could get them a piggy bank and teach them how to use it. By the time they are 10 years old, they will understand about a bank and passbook, deposits and withdrawals. We can teach them the concept of compound interest. We need to teach them how money can grow in a savings bank account. Unfortunately, schools don’t teach about personal finance. So, children have to learn it from parents.

We should not discuss the quantum of investment and wealth. But, we can discuss budget; what to buy and when to buy; is it within the budget? Is the purchase for satisfying a social status need?

Older children can be taught about Mutual Funds and equity markets. We should however, caution them about the perils of trading in equity market.

Children are often impatient and look for immediate rewards. Through saving money, we can make them experience delayed gratification. Let them wait for a while before they are handed over things on demand.

Encourage your child to take loans for their education and also repay them by themselves. This way, they will get into a financial discipline.

They have to be taught what is the value that they are getting out an expenditure. Is the purchase worth the amount spent?

While making the child realise that we should be spending within our earning limits, we cannot emotionally burden the child by telling them that we are undergoing a lot of stress and pain in order to earn.

Financial discipline in a child starts at an early stage. The child picks up nuances by seeing his parents’ spending habits. The way unreasonable demands are dealt with by the parents put s a foundation to the child’s view towards finance.

 

 

Parenting #4 - Self-esteem versus ego

What is ego? It is an external validation that each one of us seek for our capabilities.

What is self-esteem? It is an internal assurance of our capabilities.

Ego, in itself, is not bad per se. It is how we feed it. It is generally considered bad to have an ego., because what we encounter is an inflated ego.

A child has to develop an ego so he knows that he is an entity by himself. So, we as a parent, boost his ego once in a while, without overdoing it.

We have to teach our child to embrace a healthy ego, because that will build our child’s self-esteem. Self-esteem is a must for every individual. It takes its roots at the child stage itself. High self-esteem is important for a child to develop her self-confidence. She believes in her inner capabilities and hence develops confidence to take up activities.

A child with high self-esteem will learn to deal with failures as, since she is confident about her capabilities, she is willing to put in more hard work to overcome her failure.

A child with low self-esteem, on the other hand, sees poorly of herself. She does not try hard, as she starts with the belief that she is not good or capable enough. The resultant failure will reinforce her belief about herself. This forms a vicious circle. A child with low self-esteem will tend to get bullied.

How can we better our child’s self-esteem? We should praise. We should acknowledge the child’s actions and praise her for her actions. We should praise the action and not the individual. We should be specific with our praise. Not, “You are so generous. You always help people.”. But, “Today, you helped your friend with her class notes as she hurt her good hand. That was a nice gesture.”

We should be careful not to overpraise. We can avoid extreme words like, “You are the best singer/sportsman ever.” In case of failure, boost the confidence by saying, “You can do better next time with practice or by learning new skills, now that we know what you need to work on to become better.” We should avoid blaming external factors for the child’s failure such as, “You performed well, but the game did not follow fair rules”; or, “The ground was bad”.

Self-esteem is the foundation for a child’s growth. The difference in understanding ego and an inflated ego helps in nurturing he child in the right direction.

Parenting #3 – Teach through action

An infant imitates expressions of the people she sees around her. That’s how it starts. Then we deliberately teach the child various day to day actions, which the child picks up by copying us. Simultaneously, the child also picks up the not-so-obvious actions and expressions like our tone, the pitch of our voice, our facial expression and does the matching of the tone and the expression.

As the child grows up, he observes and learns from how we interact not only with him but also with others around us.

A lot of values get imbibed in a child only through picking up from the behaviour of those around him. Empathy, sharing, caring, attitude of gratitude, moral values, violence, talking mannerisms; basically everything.

Many a times, we advise our children on various issues. Our favourite mode, right? We have to remember that we have to walk our talk. You cannot have one rule for self and one for our child. We have to be the model we want our child to be.

While operating a library, many parents would ask me how to make a child read. I would always tell them to have a reading time with their child. Read their book for them when they are young and as they are able to read by themselves, sit with them and read a book with them.

The way we treat our spouse and the other way round, is observed carefully by the child. The amount of respect involved in the conversation, the tone and pitch of our voice are all absorbed by the child. These put a foundation for the child to grow up to treat the opposite gender accordingly. The kind of vocabulary and the language picks up is largely what the child experiences at home.

We have to be careful of how we behave in front of our child. The child is like a sponge absorbing things from around him. Let us provide an environment which helps him develop into a good human being.

Parenting #2 – Carrot and Stick

As parents, we want our children to be disciplined, well-mannered and behave appropriately. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was the popular style of parenting in 1960s and the 70s. It has evolved over the years to become “You do this particular activity and you will be rewarded”. It has gone to the point that even a small activity is rewarded. The carrot could be a clap, a chocolate to a gadget. While it is not wrong to appreciate and reward an achievement, it is important to understand the level of achievement and the kind of appreciation that is awarded, whether that reward is justified. There are times when the rewards actually cause harm to the child. For instance, if the child is told, “You brush your teeth and you get to watch TV.” This is an unnecessary reward here; as brushing of teeth has to be done irrespective of a reward. In general, activities which need to be done have to be done. There are no rewards for those.

Children perceive rewards as something they enjoy. So, when we make an activity a fun thing instead of treating it as a chore, then the child knows that chore to be a fun activity. For instance, if I want my child to keep her books away, then I would join her with a song, “The books go 1, 2, 3, 4 back on the shelves…”. I would deliberately put a book with its spine inside, then laugh at my action, “Oops! Now I don’t know which book this is. Aah! I should put it this way.” Turn the book with its spine outside. In case of a teenager, I would make him feel responsible by making him in charge of a chore.

As adults, we crave for attention or reward or appreciation. But conditioning the child to not anticipate a reward works best. We have to remember that the world mostly operates on incentive system.

Dealing with a child with a stick always is equally bad, as it dampens the spirit of the child. For me, hitting a child is not a done thing, as I see it as one of the many sources form where a child picks up slight nuances of violence.

Sticks are not limited to physical abuse, but also words. “Stupid”’ “idiot”, “good for nothing” just smashes the child’s self-esteem. The child loses her self-confidence.

Both carrots and sticks are needed. But how we want to use these and their intensity is in our hands. Too much of either of them is bad. It is my belief the at most situations can be dealt with love and patience. Of course, a lot of energy will be spent, as the child will try her best to get the thing she wants out of us. But if we show patience, by talking calmly and explaining her scientifically, we will be able to mostly convince her otherwise.

In short, authoritarian tone does not help. There is openness, if we speak softly.

Parenting #1 – Helicopter view

Parenting is a joy even with the challenges it throws our way. Parenting starts from the womb, moves to the infant stage, child stage, pre-teens, teenage, young adults, adults. We continue parenting even after they become parents.

A child does not come with a manual and each child is different. There is no one formula of parenting that works for all. At best, we can have some foundational values which can be customized to suit our child and find what will work under what circumstances.

Our style of parenting depends much upon the sources we refer to. We refer to how our parents dealt with us, we read up articles, we look at other parents or we have somebody telling us what worked for them and we copy them, or we may have some elderly constantly guiding or advising us. Some of us read articles or books on child psychology. All these are valid and useful sources. But we need to pick and choose what works for our child. There is no way to measure that what we did for our child is the best in the world. Or, if it was the right way to do. Periodically, we need to review our parenting style in our actions to verify the effectiveness.

One can’t be too conservative, nor too liberal. We have to strike a balance somewhere in between. I know, it sounds impossible. But believe me, if we consciously work on it, it is possible. Drawing an analogy to a rubber band used to tie up our hair, if we put it too loose, it will slip down. If we put it too tight, it will cause us a headache. When the band is new, we need to put fewer rounds. As we continue to use it, it loosens and we need to increase the number of rounds. Similarly, hugging a child too tightly or keeping too close, will suffocate the child. At the same time, if we let her go too far away, we may lose her.

Enjoy every stage of the child. Show concern, but don’t let the anxiety take away the joy from parenting.