Parenting Tips - Parents Guiding Your Children to a Good Future

Parents

Guiding Your Children to a Good Future

Consider this scenario. You are a middle aged executive fairly settled in your job and leading a comfortable family life. Your children have become teenagers and are on the verge of finishing high school. Now you and your spouse will encounter a crucial question: What sort of higher studies and subsequently a career will your children get into? Given the present day condition of cut throat competition and limited availability of seats in the most sought after fields, anxiety and worries are bound to grip the parents of would- be high- school graduates. The more children you have, the greater is your discomfiture.

Since the lives of parents are intricately interwoven with that of their offsprings, they are by far the best advisors for their children, provided of course that they are moderately educated. But unfortunately, due to social pressures and the raging spirit of rivalry, even highly educated and professionally successful parents come down very harshly on their children. By adopting unkind psychological methods like taunting, threatening and bullying, they compel their children to take up what they (the parents) want them (the children) to.

It follows as a natural corollary that doctors' children end up as doctors, scientists' children as scientists, businessmen's kids as businessmen and so forth. This is the general trend in India, at least. On their part, the children are reluctant to oppose their parents or break into revolt, to avoid domestic tensions and save face in public.

But this use of coercion by the parents and guardians often takes a heavy toll of the students' mental and emotional stability. Forced into a strange sphere against their wishes, they either fail to perform or perform miserably and in the process invite further sarcasm or ridicule from their parents, peers, acquaintances and so forth.

To get out of this uncomfortable situation, you as parents need to adopt a considerate and sympathetic attitude towards your wards.

Some suggestions as to how to cope with the career problems of children are outlined below:

First and foremost you must realise that each child is an individual as distinct from the others. Each child has certain innate qualities, latent abilities and talents, which need to be honed and chiselled over the years in order to bring out the best in him or her. Therefore, even when you watch your child growing up along with your neighbour's children, sharing their ideas and tastes, you must bear in mind that his/her needs are still unique.

By the time a child is 7 - 8 years of age, his/her likes and dislikes, predilections and weaknesses begin to emerge clearly. It would be important to keep a track of these when the child enters teenage and is about to choose his /her future career. Just because Mr X's daughter is good in mathematics or Mrs Y's son is good in Physics, and your child is not, does not mean he/she is stupid or dull. Why, he/she may be good in music/ geography/ English/ needlework/ painting? It becomes your duty therefore, to help him mould a decent career out of the things he/she is good at.

Never chide or admonish your child in front of others. More particularly so when he/she has metamorphosed into an adolescent or teenager. Doing so will hurt his/her ego and shatter his/her self-confidence. He/she will end up doing far more badly in his forthcoming tests or examinations.