Stepping into the role of a parent often comes with a wide spectrum of emotions and challenges, and everyone has their own way of approaching the task. The sheer diversity of parenting techniques out there can cause confusion. Whatever your current approach may be, from authoritarian to permissive, how can we know what the most effective method is to earn a child’s trust? Then, even if children do seem to listen during their younger years, hormonal changes flip the entire operation on its head. The archetype of a child entering their “rebellious phase” as they come into their teen years is well known, and many of us have experienced this first hand: the desire to break out of the boundaries and rules our parent/guardians set for us. Sadhguru on occasion quotes Robert Frost, a poet who famously says “something there is which doesn’t love a wall.”
We as humans have an inner longing to constantly expand. As parents, is it more effective to build walls or open doors for our children? Does raising another human being have to be a rigid and complicated endeavor. Sadhguru expounds upon some basic realities of parenting that may provide you the guidance you need to let nature take its course, taking the pressure off of you to know everything along the way.
Sadhguru: “Unfortunately, somewhere, people have been made to believe that children are all born improper and we have to make them proper. No. So what should I do, parenting? I want you to look back and see when you were five, six years of age, what would be the best kind of parents to have? If you look back, you would know very clearly.”
He continues, discussing a common problem in parenting. “The only qualification you have is you just came here a few years early. That’s the only mistake you’ve done. Yes. When you say, “I wish I was young,” what it means is, “I made the mistake of coming too early.” So this is the only qualification adults have, that they came here a few years earlier than the younger people. This doesn’t qualify you to advice about everything in the universe. It doesn’t. If you admit your ignorance with the youth, and especially with little children, they will become your close friends, otherwise, they look up to you because they have to. There is a hierarchy business, and of course, everybody hates that hierarchy, because looking up, neck hurts, you know? Nobody likes it. Because in trying to place yourself above, you’re losing the possibility of being a good friend. If you’re not a good friend, they are not seeking your advice, they have… they are not just in the neighborhood, now globally they seek answers, okay? You don’t know where their friend is, their friend is in Timbuktu right now, not in the neighborhood.”
“A relationship is only possible when you’re not on the pulpit, you’re down on the ground, like everybody else, on the same two feet. Then only it’s possible, then only there is a friendship. When there is a friendship, there is room for correction. When there is no friendship, you can say what you want, nobody is going to listen anyway. And if you go on telling advice after advice, they will just do the reverse, just to spite you.”
“A whole lot of children do things just because it freaks the parents. Yes or no? They’re doing it just to freak the parents, they just enjoy it because this advice is sickening. Nobody likes advice. But if there was a bond of friendship, naturally they would listen. That’s what one should earn. The parents and teachers should earn the friendship of the new generation rather than thinking just because a few years early you came, you know the universe. There’s no such thing. So, just stop advising them, just be friends with them, play with them, go to the cinema with them, listen to their kind of rap music, dance with them you will see they will be fond of you, there will be a relationship, once there’s a relationship, you can do something, you can influence them.”
For more information about Inner Engineering and how to parent yourself to be a better friend to your children and those in your life, click here.
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