Can We
Help Our Children Grow Up in Trust?
Today, my teenage daughter, declared
at the top of her voice, that we as parents don’t trust her. I was shocked to
hear this. Obviously ,her pent-up feelings found an outlet in her outburst. Since
many days, we were trying to pose a lot
of uncomfortable questions to her, which
were making her disturbed. She didn’t like us following her friends, she didn’t
like us forcing her to study, she didn’t like us to intrude in her private
space which she was creating fro herself. This experience was a wake-up call
for me,and I undertook a deeper introspection, which provided me new insights. I
am sure many of the parents may be facing similar-like situation.
As parents, we don’t find time
for our children. We don’t understand the need for spending quality time with
them. In whatever time we spend, we force our fixed notions of life on them. We
force our judgement on them on many occasions. We tell them what is right, and
what is wrong from our own perspective. We don’t present the facts in a
balanced way, which make the children develop their faculties to judge. We
analyse the situation from a biased perspective, and force our children to
accept our view-point. All this destroys the chances of trust-building.
Children can develop trust in
parents when they see their parents as friends. This change in perspective
requires much efforts from the parents. The children can trust us when we have
a firm belief in their potentialities, and we stop comparing them with other
children. The moment we realize that our children have unique potential, which
can be nurtured by us in their field of his/her choice, the seeds of trust sprout
up. We get the right wisdom to deal with our child, and the mutual trust begins
to develop. Our huge expectations from our child begins to diminish, and we try
to locate the treasure in our child by looking what lies within our child. We
are not bothered by our child’s external behaviour, simply because we ourselves
change our thinking.
Helping children to grow up in
trust will be a big challenge for the parents in the times to come. Simply
because trust-deficit in all walks of life is increasing. If we make efforts
make children grow up in trust, then we can make immense contribution in
creating of a new society. Our children can be the biggest ambassadors of
trust-building when they mature as adults. Their lessons in trust-building will
become an effective guide for them to become change-agents in their fields of
profession.
