A single cell rapidly multiplied into many many cells, some becoming the heart, bones, tissue, hands, legs and vital organs. What a miraculous journey our children went through in the womb. Ironically, we parents have forgotten that we underwent a similar journey too – we can attribute such amnesia to the busy lives we lead. We were thrown into the shores of parenting without guidance. We observed. We learnt. We made mistakes. We learnt again. We somehow try to manage our children these days. But is that parenting?
In order to be an effective parent, we must understand the field of life, not through any ideology, but actually as it is happening. Among the various organs that help us experience this rich field of life, the human brain plays a critical role in helping us observe, think, speak, create and what not.. And this organ is also the least understood. We as humanity have just begun scratching the surface of the human brain. Ask any neuroscientist and he or she would humbly admit that the human brain is the most complex thing ever discovered in the universe.
In addition to handling core regulatory functions, our brains help us create, retain and use memories. Memories include our name (we didn’t drop with a name tag; we were given that name), names of people that we closely live and interact with, names of pets, names of everything we see around and so on. Memory accumulation is primarily of two kinds: (1) Memories of ourselves and our psychological self-talk (do we ever notice our constant chattering?), and (2) memories of outwardly things other than ourselves (our parents, spouses, children, teachers, colleagues, pets, cars, bikes and so on). We constantly keep chatting with ourselves, don’t we? Our self-talk is most prominent form of memories of the brain. We are often not aware that such memories exist and these become a major part of our sub-conscious mind. These sub-conscious memories are always at play when we are interacting with the outer world.
We not only self-talk about who we want to be, what we want to achieve etc. but also self-talk to ourselves about how our children should be. My child should fulfil my unattained dream of becoming a doctor, an engineer, a scientist, a sportsperson etc. So, when we self-talk about our children to ourselves, our brains are not keeping quiet but recording everything we say. So, when we look at our children who are playing beyond a particular time, there is a cloud burst of information from the brain that all play and no study will ruin the dreams we have for our children. It will leave our children jobless. They will suffer and so on. We react instantly giving in to our fears, and reprimand our children who reluctantly return home. Children commence their self-talk, soothing themselves that they will play later and keep thinking about play when studying. We induce fear by saying that they will be a failure if they don’t do well in studies. Children continue the self-talk that begins to coat a layer of disgust in their brains towards their parents. Their brains are warning them of imminent danger whenever they see their parents, quite akin to how our brains warn us that our dreams for our children may go astray.
We see our children through our memories – both positive and negative. It’s quite the same for our children. They see us through their acquired memories. Expecting the child to not see their parents through their memories is a tall ask when we are busy doing the same and not setting an example. Can we realise this fact and observe that we are operating out of our memories whenever we are interacting with our children? We see what we want to see in them and in the process we do not see them as they are. In reality, they are nature’s beings. It’s just that we have forgotten that we are nature’s beings too due to our conditioning and the busy lives we lead. Let’s take a pause. Let’s reflect. Let’s provide an environment free of our desires for the child. An environment that is not subject to duress will ensure that our children discover their true passion and blossom into mature beings. And the process of rendering such an environment is true parenting.