Spending time with your child, how important, how tough? ~ Parenting

A child in its growing years is loaded with a nectar of unquestionable innocence, unrequited love and untold trust! With age, children tend to lose that nectar to time, but still ache for the attention and love of their parents, in ways not expressed candidly. Such symptoms may start right with toddlers. You may find some toddlers annoying everyone around to the limit, by breaking things, by doing precisely what they are asked not to do or by spoiling your favorite paintings or by even tearing apart your important files for fun. So does thast mean, they are born brats or have some notoriety in the blood already? C’mon people! It means, they need your attention and they are trying hard to seek it, when it is not that difficult or painful for you as parents to sit with them and give them a chunk of your day’s time!

Later, as kids enter the pre-teen phase, they become all the more jumpy and restless. This is probably the time when they have a lot of energy which needs to be channelized in the right way! Enroll them in extracurricular activities so that they wake up in the morning only to be greeted by a busy day full of activities and hit the bed only to enjoy a blissful dreamless sleep! After all, this is also the time when the foundation of your child’s character is tested. If it is made strong during the preteen phase, the going will get easier. Else it will turn into a roller coaster ride with life presenting the child with painfully relentless lessons.

As teenage commences, the teen may act as if he does not need you much, but his friends. And a time like teenage which is greeted with puberty, where the hormonal surges are maximum, the teen may often fail to differentiate between good and bad, between the best and the worst, between friendship and infatuation! Instead of monitoring them all the time, switch to being the best friend from being the nosy parent. Talk to him, openly! Listen to him, attentively! Share with him, the experiences of your teenage, freely! Initially he may be disinterested, but patience and perseverance here, ought to make him acknowledge the friendship with an open heart, sooner or later! Remember, during teenage, how much ever the child acts independent, feigns confidence and plays secretive, he needs you all the time around him! You give him the inherent security which no one else can give!

It is often said,’what you sow, so shall you reap!’. The statement sounds clichéd but carries a profound meaning that is often ignored. Children are the trees that grow from roots called parents. If you cannot give them a strong plinth to grow on, they will wither away even before they grow into trees! A child’s failure attributes more to your failure as a parent! With age, the realization comes, but when it does come, it is already too late, as life too gives a second chance though not for the same situation, but time never does, unfortunately!