Child Psychology: Why should parents be aware of this?

Expectations of Parents and Teachers is rather the more important point for discussion nowadays. Every parent has expectations from their children. Even if you consider yourself to be one of the most friendly parent who does not put any pressure on your child, there are subtle expectations deep within. Expectations need not be expressed at times, but the very thought in a mother’s or a father’s mind does get transmitted to the mind of the child. Such is the ‘power of thought’. I strongly recommend the book “Thought Power” by Swami Sivananda of Divine Life Society to understand how powerful a thought can be.

As parents, many times, we have a lot of anxieties and fears in our mind, for the safety of our children. Do we know that these thoughts are actually harmful for our child? Beware!! Control those thoughts because you are attracting danger to your child. Negative inputs from the media and surroundings put negative images in your mind, and when your teenage child is out for a late night party/ movie, you have these dirty thoughts in your mind. Just as there is more likelihood of being caught by a traffic police when you realize that you have forgotten your license, likewise, the probability of your child getting into one of those dirty situations increases when you have those thoughts in your mind.

“Psychology” is not about solving problems of diseased minds which is what it is made out to be in the schools and colleges, but it is the study of the mind and it’s patterns of thought. And sometimes, to differentiate the positive, I prefer calling this study as “humanology” as it is a method of understanding human minds and the way they work. When I use our psychometric tool and talk to people about their thinking styles and behaviours, people seem to get stunned about how I can say so much about their strengths, not having known them at all, but just by looking at their responses to some stimuli, and then inferring from the result of the tool.

More importantly, it is not the tool that is important, but the fact that every person is unique and full of strengths and children are the purest form of God. It is the parents who have been conditioned and corrupted by their worldly experiences and tend to transmit all their experiences to the children , although in a very subtle manner. When I deal with children and parents together, the children are easy to handle, the parents have beliefs and mindsets which are too strong. If as parents, we do not understand the minds of our own children and do not let them grow up in their own unique way, I am afraid we are destroying the future of our children. In the name of discipline, and logic and following rules, we are killing creativity in many children who are natural “out of the box” thinkers, who tend to lose confidence by the constant battering they receive from teachers and parents, just because they don’t conform to the set rules of school and have an urge or tendency to question the status quo. Most often, these children as branded as “arrogant”, “indisciplined” , “inconsistent” and so on and become the back benchers and tend to become what they have been branded as. Do we realize that these children are few in number as compared to the strict rule followers and probably are the next “Steve Jobs” or “Elon Musk” in the making? All they need is a support system and acceptance of who they are. Even the compliant and rule following children are not spared as they lose the confidence of decision making, by just blindly following rules and processes, in the name of discipline.

Over emphasis on “marks” and celebrating “toppers” has ruined the minds of children at school. “Marks” are just one measurement of how well you gave one examination. Isn’t it more important to make the teenagers realize their own strengths and the importance of aligning these strengths to work and understand work so that they gain confidence in how they are going to earn in their occupations happily and enjoying their work, rather than just focus on marks. With the world of work changing very fast, most of the courses and subjects being taught at schools and colleges have become redundant and useless. Though the education system is trying to evolve, it is way too slow and bureaucratic to catch up with the pace of the world of work. So, what is more important: “academic performance” or “skills at work” which will be in demand in the future?

Of course, leaving children to decide what they want, especially in teenage is dangerous because of the peer inputs and information overload in the society today. They need care and acceptance of who they are and personalized nurturing from mature senior professionals who can hold their hand and make them feel comfortable in their own skin. In spite of disturbances coming from the society, their inner strength and confidence in themselves as they become aware of their won strengths enables them to take their own decisions, of course, with a psychological and professional support of a “Mentor for Life“. The mentor needs to be a senior mature person, preferably a parent too, who understands “child psychology” or “humanology” and becomes a friend of the child for life. Parents have a different relation with teenagers, and in today’s fast paced life, you need an external professional/ friend to support the child along with the parents. Children need this support of appreciation and hand-holding, of course, with a lot of professional inputs about the changing world of work and the numerous options available wherein they could themselves explore and decide to take up a destination of choice before jumping into the band wagon of higher education.

This “Mentor for Life” approach is what “Dheya Career Mentors” works on, and today, we are proud to state that we have impacted more than 2 lakh lives in India, with a mentor strength of more than 1500, and we are training and certifying mentors across the country, almost 150 mentors being added every month. These mentors are specially evaluated and selected by us through stringent methods, and only committed and passionate senior working professionals join us. They are trained for more than 65 hours on the unique tools and processes of humanology, which we have developed ourselves over the last 12 years of experience, as to how to apply it on children and parents and build their aspirations to be achievers in life. Our students are all super achievers in life, and most importantly, are very happy and joyous in their respective occupations.

Most of what we have developed and are applying is based on and inspired by the BhagwadGita and Upanishads, and the aim and vision is to make India the No. 1 country in the world by 2035. This is a long term process and this entire community of mentors is achieving this by being the hand holders of our younger generation.

A tip for all parents:-

“Make it a habit to appreciate your child everyday for anything good that they do or perform.” This is the only tool that will build their inner strength, and this is in scant supply in today’s world.

Written by Naveen Badrinarayan
Director – Research & Product Design
You can reach to him on naveen.badrinarayan@dheya.com