BANGALORE: The way you raise your children is the way you raise your future generations. Since few of us have had formal training in the fine art of parenting, most of us simply treat our children the way your parents treated us. We know of no other way to do it.
Although being a parent is a great joy, it is also a privilege that involves tremendous responsibility.
While I would do anything for my two children, that willingness is not enough. We need to develop the skills of excellent parents. We cannot just hope that the way we are raising our kids is the right way and pray that we will be lucky enough that they become thoughtful, caring and wise adults.
We must take the initiative to improve our parenting abilities by attending seminars, reading books and listening to audiocassettes by the leading thinkers in this field. Then we must have the courage to keep trying to refine the ideas we learn in the laboratory of our own lives in order to find the parenting strategies that best suit our families.
I know your life is busy and there is too much to do in too little time. But those miraculous years of your sons’ and daughter’s childhoods will never come again. And if you do not devote the time and effort to becom the best parent you know you can be, one day you will deeply regret the lost opportunity.
As one father who attended a seminar I gave in Toronto said, “When my son was growing up, he constantly asked me to give him piggyback rides. Though I knew how much he loved them, I was always too busy to play with him. I had reports to read or meetings to attend or calls to make. Now that he has grown up and left our home, I realised one thing: I would give anything in the world to give that little boy a piggyback ride.”