Bring Up Your Child to Be a Good Human Being

My personal belief has been that there is more to life than just trying to tirelessly bring up a child to be a Doctor, Engineer or Managing Director of a Blue Chip Company. They will become all that and more if they first learn the art of being a good human being.

When a child is born, he/she comes with a brain ready and enthusiastic to learn. The brain is like a brand new computer, with gigantic potential for development, depending on what we put into it. Early childhood interactions deeply influence the way a person develops, therefore parents have an awesome responsibility towards the future of their children.

But we as parents are only able to feed them information based on our experiences from our parents or the World around us. So if I ask you "What do you think about our world today?" You can imagine your answer and how devastating such an input would be to your child. Not that you would be telling them all the bad things in the World, but your child will learn from your reactions to the people around you, be it when you are struck in a traffic jam in a street, or arguments with the salesman at the store, looking through the peephole each time the door bell rings, everything is filed away in your child's memory for later use.

Today Multinational companies come up with In-house Training Centers to teach their employees soft skills, man management techniques and team building skills, which should ideally come from parents. Because schools and universities can only impart education, but it's the responsibility of the parents to impart wisdom, love and trust to their children, for who does nor love kids who are sensitive to others or show respect towards elders and are caring towards friends and family.

But in this competitive world, where success is an overrated word, with limited time and more financial freedom, all we want from our child is a 1st rank in school, even if he does not have any friends and is cooped up in the house whole day long, in front of the TV or Computer. So the values that he learns are from fast paced internet games or media hyped satellite channels.

We do not even have time for a weekly family gathering, outing or a visit to the nearest church, temple or mosque. How then would you expect the child to grow up to be caring individual who knows what's happening in his community and neighborhood? Why should she bother if there is an accident on the road, or the community garden is being bulldozed to make way for a shopping mall?

It's sad to see that with more financial stability people tend to alienate themselves from family, friends and the community in general stressing more on Math, English & Science, without a lesson in Humanity!