Is raising children happy an achievable goal

Everyone has the right to pursue happiness in life. We have heard many parents saying that “All we want is for our children to be happy”. Is that goal of the parents sustainable? There is so much anxiety among parents in raising their children. It looks like the mid-age crisis begins with the difficulties of raising children. Even though the child care comes naturally to the parents, their goal to keep the children happy appears to be elusive.

There are so many books on childcare in the libraries. Honestly, can someone reduce the childcare to a science? Is that responsibility associated with raising children disease free? Are children get influenced by their peers? Under what conditions their mental faculty develops? Do children share all of their questions and concerns freely with parents? Can they make independent decisions when they grow up? There are number of questions that linger in the minds of the parents.

Honestly, each child comes with his/her own agenda. There is no one size fits all strategy in raising children. It is the constant interaction of parents with their children that helps them understand their children better and better. The strategy of telling children what to do has to change to a strategy of listening to the children carefully what they are trying to communicate with their parents. Many parents benchmark their children with their own accomplishments or lack thereof. They like their children to do even better than what they had accomplished professionally or what they aimed to achieve but could not due to economic or social pressures.

Whenever parents of children of same age meets, the discussion always revolved around children and their capabilities. Parents always believe their children’s capabilities provide them social status. They constantly compare their children with that of others. In the past, children were asked to learn other skills besides education and sometimes, they were asked to work at a very young age in order to build social skills. Now both parents work and children are left with baby sitters or forced to stay alone at home. We have officially declared child labor as a social evil. They have so many technology gadgets to view things that may not be age appropriate or allowed to communicate with people whose interaction with children may not be appropriate. Now parents work full-time to educate children well but their other skills are developed only by sending them to extra-curricular activities such as dance, music, yoga and sports. The children take enormous pressure doing those extra-curricular activities. Parents need to spend time with their children to understand their skills as well as their needs and facilitate them.

Lastly, the parents need to understand that their children’s happiness and peace are the result of their actions and that themselves cannot be a goal. The children will have to build several qualities in order for them to feel peaceful and happy. They need to develop their discriminative power to understand the difference between right and wrong, understand survival in this world is directly proportional to how they become inter-dependent, believe love is an invaluable asset that they possess to carry out their duties in this world, realize communication with others is an important part of their personal development, and lastly possess self-confidence that every goal is achievable.

It is true peace and happiness are truly a state of mind. However, one can’t change the mind quickly to achieve peace and happiness. It is a life-long exercise. Peace and happiness in life are derivatives of the quality of life one conducts and they are not goals by themselves. If one likes his/her children to be happy and peaceful, they need to develop necessary qualities themselves to achieve peace and happiness so that it would be easier for their children to emulate such qualities. They need to train their children to achieve some great qualities that would help them to derive peace and happiness.

 

Dear Syamala,

Thank you for being the first to respond to this post. I almost thought that no one is going to respond to this post and thank God you started some of the nicest feed backs I had received for my posts. Spirituality is not another parallel line that runs in our life and it is nothing but bundle of good values we possess through character development.

Again, happiness means different thing to different people. Happiness we derive as a result of great values one possesses is different from temporary and transient happiness we derive from material world. The satisfaction of doing the right things, establishing Truth as a core value in life, invoking the love inherent inside, not hurting anyone and enjoy the peace derived from these great values. These are not new values developed recently but taught in our scriptures in the name of Sathya (Truth), Dharma (Righteousness), Shanti (Peace), Prema (Love) and Ahimsa (Non-violence). These values eventually lead to permanent happiness called bliss.

All I was trying to communicate in my post is, instead of wanting to raise children happy, the parents should focus on raising children with some great values which would automatically give them enduring happiness. Happiness should never be the end goal and it is something each child gets as a result of developing his/her character. "Quality Time" is not necessarily the amount of time the parents spend with the children but how they spend that time. Most importantly, parents should realize each child is different and can never be compared with that of others or with own siblings. There is nothing the parents can teach to the children that they don't practice themselves and hence it becomes necessary to have those values themselves. That is why I said in my post, "If one likes his/her children to be happy and peaceful, they need to develop necessary qualities themselves to achieve peace and happiness so that it would be easier for their children to emulate such qualities".

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Viswa

 

Dear Kamalji,

You are on to something. In earlier days, children were raised having responsibilities for their actions from a very young age. They have come into the world with their own agenda. They are going to pursue it anyway. All parents can do is to educate them the values they need to possess in life that would help them lead a happy, peaceful and contented life. Instead of wanting to raise children happy, they need to make them achieve happiness themselves. They need to realize that happiness derived from material world doesn't last long but contentment provides them to achieve happiness that remains forever. If there actions were made with discriminative mind, they can remain peaceful at all circumstances and allow them to take responsibility for their actions.

The children will make some mistakes as they grow but what they learn out of it is more important. That need to be discussed with them. In my opinion, children who learn how to make decisions earlier become more successful than the children who were told to follow instructions.

Viswa

 

Dear Shanvy,

You have raised some very important questions to ponder in response to this post. I remember your blog earlier and my response to it.

At a very high spiritual level, we all come into existence with some basis core values and an intent to pursue bliss through our merger with the Creator. Obviously, each one of us don't know how long we have been traveling and how long we are going to travel in this world.

If we understand the concept that we have the grace of the Lord to succeed in our goal, our inherent nature that is associated with our Atmic Principle is going to manifest. Only the effort is lacking and with that effort, we will make progress. As far as children are concerned, if we understand that they have some inherent values residing already in them, we will realize our role as a parent is to invoke those inherent values. How do we do that? Only by practicing such values ourselves so that they could emulate such values. When a child experiences love from his/her mother, it reciprocates that because the child already has that quality inherently inside of him/her.

What you are talking about here is passion. Everyone comes into this world with two a) Atmic Principle with core values) and b) impressions of our actions or actions we did not pursue but desired to pursue in our prior life. It is difficult for anyone to realize core values of Atmic Principle unless one satisfies the impressions. While that Rajasic Guna is satisfied, a child should be given a lot of dose of divine core values. That is the best way we can put children on the right track. For that we should learn how to invoke our inherent Atmic Values.

Everyone of us is learning all the time in our lives. We have to realize that we have so much to learn from our own children as much as we teach them. The new generation might be different than older generation in terms of how they want to pursue their passion, how they want to be independent and how they bond with the parents but knowingly or unknowingly, they would be be watching the values practiced by their parents (provided they invoke their Atmic Values) and relate it with their own Atmic Values. Every life does that automatically.

The path might be different but everyone's goal is to pursue Bliss. Only the time it takes vary from person to person. That is why the goal to make a child happy is elusive. Only thing parents can do is to provide the value ingredients that would get them the end result of becoming blissful.

Viswa

 

Dear GG,

It depends on what we see as happiness. If we learn how to take things that happens in our lives, we can achieve bliss that will never be elusive. Every experience happens for a reason and if we understand that, life becomes simpler. Making it simple works. It is hard but not impossible.

Viswa