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“When a child comes into your life, it is not time to teach; it is time to learn!” – Sadhguru
Back in 2010, when I was blessed with my elder son, little did I know how much a child can contribute to your learning and growth! Each moment that you spend with your little one, you tend to let that inner child inside you come out for a while! You jump, play, shout, babble and dance and give them a delightful company. All the little things that you forget in the process of growing up and getting mature, sprout up in your life once again making your life more colorful. You do not even realize that you have got another chance to live that childhood again…
But childhood is not just about having fun in shower, smearing yourself up in crayons and climbing trees. It is the foundation of who you will grow up into one day! As a parent, we want to teach our children good manners right from the beginning, we want to inculcate kindness in our kids, we want them to grow into good human beings. We lecture them about growing more trees, preserving wildlife and depleting natural resources, keeping the surroundings clean and much more. Stop and reflect for a moment, if we can travel back in time and become a child with them while playing, do we also travel ahead few years by projecting ourselves as an ideal adult who we visualize them in future?
Here comes the hard part of parenting. You teach your child to be good to others, he might or might not be. But if you BE good to others, you don’t even need to tell them to be good. When I told my son not to throw garbage on roads (emphasizing the importance of cleanliness), deep down inside my heart, I knew that first I will have to give up this habit of neglecting cleanliness of roads. To teach him kindness and helping the needy ones, I picked up the routine of offering food/sweets to poor children on special occasions. To show him the wonders of gratitude, I myself started thanking God before every meal. The list is endless! Today, when he turned 7 years old, I can see the effect of changing myself, on this little being. I am happy that in this beautiful phase of motherhood, I actually got a chance to mold the ‘child’ me. Being blessed with another tiny time travelling machine recently, I am ready to embark on this journey once again!!!
Pick up smiles 