Have you ever seen a parent who always sanitises the child’s hand every time the child touches the ground and is always behind the child to make sure it doesn’t fall? Have you ever seen a parent who complains to the school every time their child is upset about something that happened? If you are a parent or a school staff, there is a high chance you have met one.
Have you ever felt the urge to smack a whiny, self-absorbed, perennially offended colleague? If you have met one, then there is a high chance you have felt the same. I have and it is perfectly normal to feel so or ask the colleague to grow up.
This colleague of yours is the child from the first incident. The parenting which results in this behaviour is antibacterial parenting. A hyper-protective parent who ensures nothing bad ever reaches or happens to their child. They want a sterile environment where no one is hurt and everyone gets a cookie. These are the parents who think everyone is special and competition makes them not feel special. The parent who thinks it is the world’s fault that the child is not feeling special. The parent who wants to control what is said in the world. The parent who thinks hatred is bad and somehow can be eliminated.
The next time a child whines for anything or complains about something others are doing which is not to their liking think of this annoying colleague. While I won’t ever advocate running a rat race, eliminating competition is against the very fabric of development. I most definitely am not going to advocate physical threat. Both these are counterproductive in the long run.
How did we reach here?
In the 1970s there was a movement in the US called the Self Esteem movement. This Self Esteem movement created helicopter parents and the children grew up self-absorbed. The kids of the helicopter parents grew up with artificially inflated self-esteem became the new bunch of anti-bacterial parents. The satellite television followed by social media has contributed to that immensely. The parents now find the need to hyper protect their kids and smother them to the extent that the kids grow up to become socially incompetent. Then if the child doesn’t turn out to be the best in everything then they feel it is the society and the system which is at fault. This has become a civilisation risk. While I have taken a US example, it is not uncommon for you to see this in most countries. Social psychologist Roy Baumeister has done research to show that this movement contributed to lowering the school grades.
The field of child psychology has also contributed to this paranoia. After witnessing what was horrible in the world, the psychologists I believe have devised strategies to fix these ailments. They created measures which will create a society they think they want. The only issue is they industrialised the approach without running any experiment. With no proper mechanism to undo or learn these experiments are causing massive social damage. For example, continue to tell the child that they are special. Instruct a child to never utter the word hate. This doesn’t help the child learn.
Where should we be?
There is a popular proverb in Tamil ” களவும் கற்று மற” which means ‘Learn to steal and then forget it. The essence of the proverb is to communicate the essence of making mistakes and more importantly learning from it. The author underlined the idea of individuals learning for themselves by doing and introspecting over being servile.
As a parent, I want to ensure my daughter has the following abilities to enable her to enjoy her life to the maximum.
- Ability to reason
- Ability to handle adversity
- Ability to overcome failures
These three abilities will help her be civil, maximise her potential and live a fulfilling life. Parents need to create an environment which fosters the development. This environment has to be imperfect and hard. Just like how a body develops immunity only by fighting germs, the mind develops a character only by practising. The best part of this is that the environment actually exists unless artificially altered. Parents just need to ensure they don’t ruin it.
How do we do it?
When left on their own, it is very common to see kids do the following.
- Pretend play
- Make games, create rules
- Fight over rules
- Break the rules and tell stories to coverup
This teaches the children to do the following.
- Making sense of a situation
- Figure out solutions
- Having conflicts
- Deal with conflicts
- Arguing
- How to tolerate dissidence in an argument
- Failing
- Standing up and continuing after a failure
- Tell lies to escape a tough situation
- Dealing with the consequences of telling lies
- Teamwork
- How to be friends with people who don’t agree with you always
Next time, when your child comes from the play and says that another child tells she/he has lost the game, don’t go back and tell people how to play without winners. Don’t tell the other kids to give up once. Don’t tell your kid failing is fine. Don’t tell your kid to not play. Don’t tell your kid that she/he is also a winner. Tell the kid to go back and do better next time. They have to learn to deal with issues themselves.
So, what should the parent do and don’t? Here are a few simple rules I want to follow.
Do
- Give kids ample time to play with other kids
- Explain why on every moral without asking them to obey
- Explain the value of honesty and truth over feelings
- Let kids have unstructured time to discover
- Give them outcome goals and let them figure out how to reach there
- Help them understand concepts and let them train themselves
- Make them feel loved
- Teach them the value of self-defence
- Teach them the value of giving up in a negotiation
- Help them carve a path for their career
Don’t
- Compare your child with others and push them for that
- Justify whining or glorify victimhood
- Ever not listen to them
- Ever ask them to obey you on something you can’t explain
- Protect them from failures
- Respect their feelings more than truth
- Instil fear of falling sick or making mistakes
- Tell them you will protect them always, especially financially
- Always interfere when kids fight
- Fear calling them out when they make a mistake
Conclusion
The reason to write this blog is not just for others but to also honestly admit that I have failed in doing or not doing some of the things I have given below. It is never too late. As parents, we have a duty to ensure the kids continue to live in this society and take it forward. If we can’t do it, we are doing a disservice to society and the child.
Demystifying a skeptic's world 