What’s you Parenting Strategy???

Parenting Strategy which most of us as a parent follow is:

0-6 yrs:      Love and affection

6-14 yrs:    Friendly atmosphere

14-21 yrs: Being strict, inculcating discipline, 
                      become a spy.

Do you follow the same parenting strategy? Then this blog is for you.

Agreed there are no parenting guidelines. No parent is perfect. Not all the situations are similar. But still what we are doing is not the correct strategy. What our parents, our ancestors adopted was totally different and believe me their strategies worked wonders. I am not a parenting professional or a student of psychology but sharing with you my experiences.

According to me what we should follow and what our parents followed was:

0-6 yrs:      Love and affection

6-14 yrs:   Being strict, inculcating discipline, 
                      become a spy.

14-21 yrs: Friendly atmosphere

What we as modern parents have done is we have shown our over smartness and result is right in front of us. Our children have lost the respect for their elders, they don’t have emotional attachment, they don’t know how to control their emotions, they throw tantrums quite often and create embarrassing situations for us....(list is never ending....)

It is never too late. Still we can make changes in our parenting strategies and modify our child’s behaviour.

0-6 year: Ample love and affection

Be it your first kid or second, treat both equally. Try to be as excited, as enthusiastic, as energetic, as curious as you were for the first one. This will help in reducing sibling quarrels. Never compare. Each child is born with its unique positives and negatives. Try to identify and treat accordingly.

6-14 years: Being strict, inculcate discipline, become a spy.

This phase in child’s life is not for developing friendship with them but this phase is to inculcate moral values, discipline, respect for others (be it elders or sibling). To inculcate these values you need to be a bit strict.

That doesn’t mean you don’t have to care for their emotions or scream and shout but have to make them realise what is expected out of them. What are good deeds and what are bad ones which disappoint others. They need to have control over their emotions, their deeds.

This period is the perfect phase to do so because kids are like clay, if you don’t mould them at the right time, they will get harden and you will never get a chance to remould it. In short, it is not the time to be friendly but to be strict.

We should even have a check on their deeds so that they are not misguided or mislead. If so they may develop negativism. Especially in this tech world, where we allow our kids to become tech savy, be updated with the current trends, updates, etc. This can be best done by spending more time with your kids, talking to them, surfing mobile together, so on and so forth.

14-21 years: Friendly atmosphere

Being the crucial years in a child’s life, you need to be friendly with them. This is the phase when we have to work hard to develop trust for ourselves in child’s mind. Being strict might lead to hatred, anger, disagreement, quarrel, negativism, etc.

If in the early stages you had a strong emotional bonding with your kid then this phase won’t be a difficult one for you. Once you have developed a trust for yourself at this phase, I guarantee you will have a strong emotional bonding with your kid; they will respect you throughout their life. In hindi there is a famous saying, ‘Wo saari khushiya apke kadmo par lakar rakh denge, agar aap chahe to.’

Yes, agar aap chahe to.

If right strategy is applied at the right time you will enjoy parenting and see a small bud transforming into big, bright, fragment flower. Always remember ‘Jaisa boenge vaisa hee paenge.’

What about you? What kind of parenting strategy are you following?