QnA with Sri Sri
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2015

Q: Please give us some tips on parenting.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: It is very difficult for me to talk about parenting. I have no experience. But I can give you some ideas through observation. You have to put this into your experience and see. If you are very orderly, children will make you chaotic. Children are best to break your boundaries. So, your children teach you a lot that others may not be able to. The first thing for us is to observe a kid, its tendencies, and the direction the kid is taking. It is a two way journey. What do you want to learn from them? And what do you want to teach them? Don’t try to put them through your own vision. You have to share your vision with them and persuade them if their vision is wrong. Every child has come to this planet with certain tendencies, certain basics which cannot be changed. And he/she acquires certain things which can be controlled. This is one thing that we have to keep in our mind. If you tell children not to lie, and ask them to reply a phone call saying you are not at home, this is simply not going to work. Having an argument in front of your children will make it worse. If you want to have some argument between you and your spouse, you better give your children some job, and then fight as much as you can. But by the time they come back, you better patch up.
Expose them to multifarious activities. This has to be done before a child is 10 or 11. You should take the child to science, arts and expose them to all the faculties including doing service. On one Sunday, give them some chocolates and ask them to distribute to the poorest people. Once or twice in an year, take them to slum and ask them to do social service. This would enhance their personality in some unknown manner and same thing in studies.
You have to expose them to both science and music. Knowledge, music and meditation – all three are required to make the education complete. Then you can call someone educated and civilized. So, make sure that children learn music and yoga. And also make sure that the children have a scientific tempo, and they ask questions. Encourage them to ask questions. A child starts asking questions at the age of three. Then on they keep asking questions.
Then see the personality of your child. See that they interact with various age groups. You can understand with this whether they are developing any superiority or inferiority complex, or if they are becoming introvert or extrovert. And you can play a very important role here. Play some games with them, and encourage them to interact with all the age groups, and we can mold their personality to a very central, talented and flexible human being, to a personality which is free of complexes. Children who have inferiority complex would like to interact more with the younger ones and would try to run away from elder ones and even try to avoid their equals. People with superiority complex try to shun the younger ones, and would only want to relate to the older ones. They are not good communicators in either case. As parents, you can teach them communication skills. It is very important for them to learn how to communicate.

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