Parenting

 

Parenting

What is it?

If we go by the definition, Parenting is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood.

I find parenting tough and honestly, it scares me. The thoughts like “Will I be good at it?”, “What if I failed?”, etc. roams in my head whenever I think about it. Though I am a student right now still I am occupied with these thoughts because I find this topic extremely important. As I am socializing with new people now and then and I am realizing it even more by every passing day that how much of a role an upbringing of an individual plays in their life.

I consider parenting as a feeding tool. Parents feed their children with all the required things they want their children to grow with. It can be the manners, their way of seeing and analyzing things, anything. Let's talk about feeding. Before feeding, we make sure about how good it would be for the body, how healthy it is, what kind of proteins and vitamins we would be getting from it, right? Why can't we do this when it comes to parenting too? Children aren't good at expressing themselves, they use very unusual ways. They will give you hints and parents has to understand and decode them. Here the Child Psychology comes in. Studying child's behavior, their brains, their reactions towards things, etc. all of this comes under it. Knowing about this can serve as a helping hand to the parents who are struggling to be as good in parenting as they can be. It is making parenting a bit easy.

Child psychology focuses on the mind and behavior of children from prenatal development through adolescence. Child psychology deals not only with how children grow physically, but with their mental, emotional, and social development as well.

“A child will not say- 'I had a tough day, can we talk?' Instead, they say 'Come, play with me.'”

When raising children, we don’t just want something that works in the short-term. Since we have such a massive role in shaping their brains, especially from birth to five, we want to be mindful architects of their brain structure. Either we put in the time and mindfulness it takes now, and it will pay off later, or we make quick withdrawals now and we end up with no savings later on.

Why do we need to understand the reason behind a child’s action?

This can be a huge perspective shift for many because, for so much of our lives, we were told that our misbehavior meant we were bad. But that isn’t and was never the case. Young children do not yet have the developmental capacity to be able to connect their stress response, emotions, and bodily sensations, to words. Heck, many of us adults do not have that down. So instead, all of this stress comes out in behavior.

If we look at difficult behavior and are able to see that our child is stressed and needs help, we are more inclined to respond in a way that will connect with them and help them.

If we see them as willfully disobedient, that automatically puts us in a space of disconnection.

What this fact does mean, is that we have the immense capability to mold our child’s brain. The capability to be intentional in what we model and teach. The capability to be a mindful architect and build our child’s brain in a way that will allow them to thrive in their world for the rest of their life.

 So, help them to differentiate between their emotions. Teach them to own it up. One can do this only when they themselves know at least a little about a child's behavior. This is why we need to know the science behind their behaviors.

The way our parents grew up, we grew up is completely different than today's scenario. It was really difficult for me to admit that the way my parents responded to me may have not served me well. Let me clarify, this isn’t about blame. I am not blaming. This is about awareness and understanding. We can acknowledge that a parenting practice harmed us, even if it was unintentional. Even if it was all they knew at the time. Thus, recognizing that a generational parenting practice did not serve us, gives us the chance to break the cycle for the next generation, and gives us a chance to heal.

All I want to convey is, we can be the generation that ends unhealthy pieces of advice and emotional response patterns in our families which we have been fed as under their parenting.

The patterns I wish to break include: shaming for big emotions, isolation as a response to anger, ignoring or dismissing of emotions, self-centered responses to emotional expression, feeling guilty for expressing emotions, children cannot correct their elders, etc.

The patterns I would like to include would be: Having conversations about nudity, sex, rapes whenever the child crosses the required age, educating them in these topics and providing a fair perspective for them to look upon, teaching how to take criticism in a positive sense, etc.

 

I would like to sum up by quoting some of the parenting advice that I loved from famous personalities.

§  Christina Aguilera believes in walking around naked in front of her children so they're not embarrassed by nudity.

§  Barack Obama says, " Combine love with order. You give them unconditional love, and then you give them some structure and some rules, and they usually turn out really, really well.”

§  Blake Lively loves the idea of putting a comment box in the house for her children to leave constructive criticism.

§  Jada Pinkett Smith believes in giving her children space, especially when it comes to their rooms.

§  Ice Cube says, “You have to be there and be involved. Don’t leave it up to the mother to raise your kids. You need to be just as involved. Just being there is not being there.

Parenting is a very individual act. No mother or father is the same — just like no two kids are the same. There is no methodology for being a parent. There aren’t any certain rules and instructions which can make you good parents, instead knowing your child on your own, noticing them, and then finding ways can and will take you one step closer to being a great parent to your child.

 

  Thank you,

 Sharma Saniya.