Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Being a non-attached parent

How ‘non-attached’ can parents be? While we love our kids so much, we want everything that we believe is the best for them. We nurture desires for them to achieve, we support them in striving towards these and feel extremely proud and happy of their accomplishments. Nothing wrong with it at all. Yeah, there is a possibility that they may not come right up to our expectations of them but we continue to re-align our expectation so the we don’t get disappointed. One little problem though, who is our real child? What are their real characteristics?
Essentially what we are doing is that in the name of love, we are binding our children into an ‘image’ of them that sits in our minds. We build this ‘image’, know it much better than what’s ‘out there’ which happens to be our real child. We nurture dreams about this ‘image’ that’s within us, ‘support’ or try to transform our real child to fit into this ‘image’ that we have created. If they do something that does not necessarily belong with this ‘image’, we get upset and angry, especially if this happens unannounced. A simple example could be that this ‘image’ of our growing child is a willing helper at home and if he refuses to ‘mow the lawn’ for whatever reason, we get upset and angry about it. Because what we have done, is gotten attached to this ‘image’ of our child that sits in our mind. To make things worse, we have unknowingly attached ourselves to this ‘image’ as well. So now, we have trapped ourselves with the ‘image’ of our child. We now take ownership of the expectations that we set, get anxious about these and suffer if they don’t get fulfilled. Ever wondered why children are not as often disappointed in their parents as parents are in their kids? May be, because children love their parents in a non-attached manner. Because they don’t attach themselves to the tangible and non-tangible things about their parents. They expect less than what they love . Similarly, if we are able to have a non-attached view of our children as individuals, we not only nurture their real characteristics but also liberate ourselves from the emotions that attachment is usually associated with.
While we strive for this ‘non-attached’ extreme, which is almost impossible, we can hopefully find a comfortable midway where only the positives of attachment stay with us. We as parents can still feel happy in their success and proud of their accomplishments but liberate ourselves from the negatives such as annoyance, disappointment and suffering. While we get busy finding this mid-point, our children find ways of growing up and building skills that really define who they are. While we are willing to give up something that we believe is vital to our happiness, our children find personal ways of staying happy. The end result, I have to admit, is much more satisfying – a learned non-attached happiness that is not perceived as ‘forced upon’ by the kids.
Perhaps this is why non-attachment is now recognized as a management/leadership skill besides already being an essential ingredient of medical training and other life-saving professions. It is about time parenthood recognizes the importance of this skill to nurture and sustain healthy growth which is free of selfish desires.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Digital Parenting

A new dimension has recently been added to parenting. Up until now, it was well defined by good nutrition, good exercise, good education and good moral values, all delivered and packaged into instructions, handed over to us by our previous generations. As parents, we know what is right for our children and all that was needed was involvement and lots of love and care to build upon each of these dimensions, uniquely catered to our child’s needs, in an environment hand picked by us. And now comes the ‘digital’ world. Suddenly we have something that was not handed down to us by our parents. In fact, our children are savvier and more connected via the digital world than we are. More than any other generation has ever been. They have an immense exposure to information, technology and social media such as email, chat, networking and buzz. So now parenting has a whole new dimension – Digital Parenting.
          My brother was surprised to see me – a completely non techy person, so involved in facebook and other social networking sites. Come to think of it, how do we really make major decisions in the lives of children? Consider buying a house. We first short list a few houses based on our research. We drive around the neighborhood to get feel for the environment. We then meet some neighbors to understand the ‘culture’ so to speak. When deciding upon a school, we take tour of the school, meet with the administrators, teachers and possibly other students. Essentially like anything else in life, we are using our good judgment coupled with experience to ‘pick’ the right choice for our child. And once the choice is made, a well guided learning process begins, showing them how to observe, analyze, absorb, and respond to the new neighborhood and the school. Now the next step is to stay involved all along and watch for signs of stress or any kind of negative behaviors or attitudes that you can warn and protect your child from. Sense them ahead of time and help your child understand how to deal with them. Now switching to the new digital parenting, we need to do the exact same things.
          We need to stay aware of what’s available out there, we need to use it, find out what’s on it, how people use it, understand the ‘culture’ so to speak. Stay involved, look for signs of stress, addiction, or any misuse. As parents we need to bundle up our insight and expand it to the vast, limitless digital world, to make room for our children and guide them how to use it beneficially – something that we learn first hand. It sounds almost fake, but in the virtual world as well, we need to be alive, felt and heard just the same as in the physical world. We need to develop that richness of digital experience just the same as in the physical world. We need to understand the consequences of digital mistakes, and how to correct and learn from them. How we take out time for it without getting addicted to it ourselves, is an example we set for our children. The thought that we still have the responsibility to set an example for the next generation and to guide them vs they teaching us or conducting courses on technology for the ‘parent generation’ , is actually a comforting thought.
          For those parents who derive satisfaction in being able to stay ahead of the curve, Digital Parenting is now an inevitable reality.