Building a better world; one kid at a time

When I became a mother for the first time, I was astounded by the kind of love that I had for my son, it was hard to believe that this kind of love existed. I would get upset when he wasn’t happy or comfortable, I cried with him when he got hurt. I became vigilant when he took his first steps; to save him whenever he stumbled, so that he doesn’t fall.
But when the baby steps changed into perpetually toddling steady steps, I failed to realise that the mindful planning to protect him, needs a refresh click.
Yes it’s true, when our children grow up our strategies as parents should also grow with them, we need to broaden our perspective and stop overprotecting them like we did when they started walking. Children do not always want or need to be protected. Sometimes it is okay to let them face the difficult situations. Specially when introducing them to the outer world, for instance, if a child picks up an object belonging to someone else, and ends up breaking it, the parents apologise, try to clear the air on behalf of their child. What ideally should happen is that you see the object broken and tell your child that you’ve made a mistake, you should be sorry and make him/her apologise on his own. This has very deep effects.
(A) Your child learns to apologise and experiences guilt (guilt is very important)
(B) He/She learns to be cautious next time. Children have huge amounts of self respect they don’t forget embarrassment easily.
(C) They build a level of trust with you that you will help them to overcome their mistakes.
(D) They learn to admit their mistakes.
Similarly, if a child is physically weak, we prefer to not give him any physically challenging tasks, we are afraid that if he goofs up, he’ll be made fun of. Stop doing that, let him face the challenges and the consequences. They learn to rise stronger after falling down. Give them immense love and confidence for keeping at it, but not sympathies. Sympathies can sometimes be lethal.
In an opposite case, a physically and mentally strong child is always expected to do the best and be successful, we train them for achieving success only; and forget to teach them to face failure which is a reality of life; and a sudden encounter with failure for such children has odd results. When their egos, which have been fed with a ‘I’ll-never-fail’ attitude, shatters, it creates a havoc inside them, they lose their confidence and don’t know how to get up and start again.
As parents it is our prime responsibility to raise humble human beings first and for doing that, we first need to tell them the importance of facing failure and secondly the importance of handling success decently.
The world can survive without arrogance but it wouldn’t probably survive without nobility and kindness, let’s play our part to make this world a better place with better human beings to live with and make life easier.