Supporting, smothering, or setting free? -2

Caring is one thing and over caring or suffocating is another. We usually call it possessiveness and it more often than not banks on obsessiveness.

Let us take a very common example. When a toddler starts walking, he doesn’t understand and just starts. It begins with trial and error and then goes further step-wise. Similarly, first, we let our children balance and help them stand up by experimentation. Then, we make them take steps by holding our hand and when they have mastered walking by holding us, we teach them to walk independently (meaning without depending on anyone and anything). Through this entire process they fall and rise and if they come back with fear, does that stop you from trying to make them walk? No! We make them understand the importance of walking and independence, but we don’t tell them to stop, do we?

So, my question is why do we do that?

Why not let them hold something whenever they walk for the rest of their lives?

Sounds bizarre, right?

The same theory applies to life. Every human has their own set of ups and downs. Sometimes these are expected and at other times are like a bolt from the blue, totally unexpected. In their early days' parents make children learn the value of not being dependent on something, but when they start walking on their own, parents start becoming insecure. It's fine to be insecure; they are your children you nurture them. However, the experience of life is also one aspect that matters to a large extent in making choices and taking decisions.

Whatever knowledge and information we have today is a part of these very experiences. It is not a question of being blind to your child’s faults and not be concerned about seeing them fall into a well but make them aware of the consequences of the act they are planning to do. Though, results are inevitable. Depending on you or someone else can be the temporary component. You can take care of them but can’t take away the pain which has been written in their pages of life.

Sometimes you become over caring. Over caring arrives with predictable as well as unpredictable ramifications. For instance, your child is taking permission for a school picnic to a place which you’ve already visited. At that moment without having a second thought, you will say no.

Here, what the child thinks is that; my mother/father is not allowing me to go with my friends.

Is it wrong to revisit the place?

Or my friends are not good?

You are troubling their socializing skills with unnecessary thoughts. Let the child go and have an experience of living, figuring out the choices, and enjoying on their own. Vacation with family and with friends is a different experience. You must think from their perspectives too and not only yours. Next time a child will not willingly go on a vacation with family because the conclusion would be that my choices or needs are not important.

Parents usually tend to get too influenced by what others would say hence the community takes precedence over their children. This is a very annoying aspect for children, as they feel “if the community is your society then friends are children’s society”. If you want them to accept yours then before that you have to accept theirs.

In this world, they have to survive on their own and it is essential for parents to equip them accordingly. If they wouldn’t, the world would either gobble them up or the children would end up as dysfunctional adults.

-Krupa Shah