Parenthood seems to make
you nervous for the rest of your life. We do our best to give our children the
opportunities to realize their full potentials because we want to prepare them
for a good life ahead. Children grow up as separate individuals whose aspirations
are not necessarily similar to their parents’. I shy away from commerce seeing
how my dad led his life as a businessman although I was grateful that he had
sponsored my tertiary education. I wanted to have a career and was rather undomesticated seeing how unhappy my
mother was as her life centered around her husband and her children.
In bringing up my own
children, I care most about two things , “ Intuitiveness” and secondly “ Self
Esteem”. I only hope that I have not said or done things that will affect their
emotional well being and their self confidence. I believe that all of us grow
up with baggage and issues, some have more baggage and issues than others. Some of us spend most of our adult lives working through some
of the damage we have suffered growing up and gain a perspective of things in general while others carry on living and oblivious to how
their particular behaviour may have been affected by some experience they
encountered during their growing years.
Recently I watched the movie
“Atlas Shrugged” Part 1 and was interested to read the novel upon which the
movie was based on. When I was told that we had a copy of the novel at home, I
looked through our collection of books on our book shelf in search of the novel
written by Ayn Rand. I did not find the novel but to my surprise, I own books
like “ How Your Child Learns and Succeeds” and “How to teach Your Child to
Read”. I must have bought them in
my quest to be a competent parent.
Though my life
was not exactly like the protagonist, Kate Reddy in “ I don’t Know How She does
it” by Allison Pearson, amid all the school runs, errands and last but not
least, court runs, my adrenalin juice was constantly flowing into my veins. I
tried to read in between my errands whenever I had the time even if they were
just a few minutes while waiting
for children to come out from classes. However there were certain books which
never got to the finishing line. While I might have good intentions, I found myself getting lost in the wilderness as I ploughed through manual like
“How Your Child Learns and Succeeds”. To my defence, I would argue that my
girls were growing up and I should bask in those moments observing them rather
than bury my nose underneath some parenting manual. I fetched the book “How
Your Child Learns and Succeeds” from the book shelf and discover a bookmark
inside the book. The book mark was drawn and made by my elder daughter for Mother’s Day (around ten years old then) who obviously knew what her mother
needed most. Bookmarks, plenty of bookmarks to mark all the half read books and
still hope to reach the finishing line one day
As I flipped through the
book“ How Your Child Learns and Succeeds” written by Cynthia Ulrich
Tobias, I fervently hope that I had not done too badly as a parent
since I had barely covered one sixth of the book. It is interesting how the
author characterized people with different personality traits and accorded them
with different learning styles to describe how our minds work. It is useful to identify
the characteristics of certain
personality traits with a view to understand the individual’s innate abilities and learning styles.
If I understand correctly the description according to the chart in the book, I
identify myself as the Dominant Concrete Random type; according to Tobias,
what makes sense to these people are inter alia : using insight and instinct to solve problems, working with
general time frames rather than specific deadlines , trying something
themselves rather than taking your word for it. Dominant Concrete Random is
often stressed by excessive restrictions and limitations and forced schedules
or routines. I do get easily stressed when I am
expected to conform and I still charge ahead with certain tasks despite being advised against doing
them. The book by Tobias is an interesting read that gives one some insight into our respective
learning style.
Since I feel passionate
about reading, I really was eager to instill in my children the reading habit
hence the book “How to teach Your Child to Read”. As a new mother, I was sold
the idea of getting a child to read before the child turned
three years old. It was amazing how these sale agents had a way of
knowing that you had just recently given birth and you would be interested in
any programmes relating to the child brain development. Besides going through
the flashcards provided by Glenn Doman reading set, I was zealous to the extent
that I actually made flashcards out of manila cardboards with words which were
definitely not relevant to a two year old. It was a tall order to get a curious
and restless toddler to sit still for a couple of minutes while you flashed the
cards with red letterings. Apparently words are supposed to be like pictures and by flashing
the words, the child learns to read as he or she identify the word like the way
he or she identifies a picture. It was hard work for both mother and child and
I did not persevere in building a
word bank which included words that were not applicable in my children’s
world.
As prosperity and greater
material success appear to be the common utilitarian goals, modern life has
become increasingly competitive for the young generation. Employability is a criteria when
pursuing a particular college degree rather than passion and an objective to broaden one’s mind; getting top grades to gain a place at a
reputable college or institution is an urgent task. The baby boomers did not
have the same stress as what the current generation are facing. Not sure if it
is the desire to live vicariously through their children for their unfulfilled
dreams or the need to prevent them from living in regrets, the more educated
parents (baby boomers included) seem to micro-manage the affairs of their children
more closely than ever. We must know that even if the young ones make any mistakes, they might not be
the same ones as the ones we have made. We do not want our children to grow old
before their years by emphasizing too much about the importance of practicality and worry about what their
future holds. As we try to impress upon our children not to take for granted
the passing of their youth, each
child must learn to be truthful to himself or herself; he or she must also become self reliant without being self absorbed and we hope that he
or she will have the courage to venture beyond the comfort zone with enough
sense and sensibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment