The Bonsai, The Wild or The Groomed

Blogging at 12am.. God I must be crazy but no. Something is bothering me and has been so since quite sometime.. Today it seems to be at its ultimate. So here I'm penning my views on a topic which I had vaguely mentioned last time about the final product person and the river like person.

Parenting has always been a tough game and not everyone is good at it. And when I say that I mean not everyone has a good approach towards parenting. Bill Cosby says, " Inspite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the book sotres, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need lots of love and luck- and ofcourse, courage".  Like everything else this is also a hit and trial for some and things do or do not work out based on the so many factors which revolve around it. Lately I have been observing how a child's mind develops under certain conditions (read parents).

Its an agreed and proven fact that for the fuller and complete development of the child the roles of both parents are important. The concept in India is that father adorns the role of the tough guy who is difficult to please and the mom is rather softer person who cuddles and easily mouldable character of our lives. "It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. ~Joyce Maynard"

Times are changing and so it the outlook of the people so with some new generation parents the ground rules are the same and some have tried to interchange the roles. The bottomeline however is I feel on how much you let the child develop. Based on what I have observed I would like to broadly categorize children into three categories which would be The Wild, The Groomed and the Bonsai.

The Wild as would the name suggest are the ones who are IGNORED. No body keeps a check on them and so they end up having thier own ways, own rules, own decisions. These kids generally turn out to be arrogant and loose thier cool very easily. They are generally very grumpy and have temperament issues as well.. It would be as difficult to get them to do a task as it would be to tame a wild bull. Like a creeper growing wild in a jungle. Aimless yet growing, a life wasted in short.

The Bonsai generally is grown in a controlled manner by which I mean that the cultivator has a certain image of the plant in mind based on which he prunes,defoliates, grafts the plant. Inshort not even a leaf is allowed to exist unless it is a part of the original design. They make very good show pieces but are not intended for production of food or any such benefitting factors. Now imagine doing something similar to a child during the growing years. The parent like the cultivator is not facilitating everytime the child wants to explore (read grow) unless they want it that way. Somehow I feel the child would never grow into a mature individual but into more of a remote controlled toy. Every move of the child is controlled. It may be that initially the child would still try to get some of the things done the way it wants to but eventually it would give up that effort because it has been so much monitored n controlled. The growth in this case is definatly designed but the end product isnt something productive. Such a child in my view would always have inferiority complex and would be less confident in his outlook towards everything in life. The thought procedure would be a lot more restricted and negetive.

As parents we should facilitate the child's growth in every sense. We should be the ladder they step on to reach thier goal. Teach them to think responsibly so that thier decisions are something they are proud of. They then become the groomed children who have a much wider horizon and are confident to go thier way and outlook towards life. Its interesting to note how children are taught in the schools here in UK. Unlike the teachers in India who cleary define what is good and what is bad or more often as they say what is right or what is wrong, the teachers here are far more accomodating. By that I mean they would tell the child there is good and bad way of doing something. having said that they leave it to the child which of them they would want to choose. In such a scenario it is very rare that the child doesnt sense the right choice and adapt it because like they say child is father of the man.It definatly has the smarts to figure out what is right or wrong in a given situation. But as parents we do not wait till they make the choice instead we push the decision to them and there the child is tempted to go towards the wrong choice because by human nature we tend to do things we are "not supposed" to do. Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. ~Roger Lewin.

 And I agree with Rose Kennedy when she says, "Whenever I held my newborn baby in my arms, I used to think that what I said and did to him could have an influence not only on him but on all whom he met, not only for a day or a month or a year, but for all eternity - a very challenging and exciting thought for a mother".