FROM AN INDIA SAILING ON A MOST CHOPPY SEA OF GALILEE! Three

GROOMING YOUR KID IN THE WISEST MANNER! Three.

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Introduction:

I am overwhelmed by the many challenges that we live with in all directions as far as we can see. Like those Netherlanders erecting a huge wall to remain safe from the Zuider Sea, we also need , as parents with a sense of responsibility and commitment, to bring up our kids with protective bulwarks all around till they come of age and able to seek and reach fresher pastures across the sea.

If the Indian people were ignored by and large all through the dynastic rule across 68 or so years by one political party, what we are watching now is a violent horseplay –like Jacobean plays in English—with most extreme happenings ignored as commonplace and a reflection of the spirit of the times. Its not the Prince that has killed Polonius but his madness merely!

I have gone further across some of these mistaken messages that we get from the media, so that you may remain updated.

Imparting Basic money sense:

One major reason why many families end up in deep debt, bondage to loan sharks or bankruptcy and mortgage is their deplorable money awareness; thousands of families suffer from it and pay dearly for their follies. Financial literacy is worth infusion at school level actually but our curricula need to be modified for that purpose. Our teachers need to be re-trained for engaging classes in it too.

Personal finance is not part of any education that anyone receives in school or at college nor is there any trustworthy way to acquire such knowledge overnight. Media can help to some extent of course but not beyond it. You must learn to sift and evaluate this information for its chicken-or-egg.!

Sellers of financial products—call them Financial Advisers if you will—can also help to some degree. But bear in mind that whatever make the man go passionate, needn’t benefit you much. What you and I want so badly are the fundamentals that will equip us to reach independent, but shrewd decisions ourselves.

Financial literacy is negatively correlated with the quality of personal financial management.

Whatever be your walk in life, you MUST surely know not only how to earn, but also how to spend and how to manage your finances without hoarding the money in a cellar and also over spending it till you go hungry. King Midas set a bad example by being a classic living example of the former vice in his country Phrygia in Greece. Micawber in “David Copperfield” by Dickens is perhaps an illustration of Dickens’s own dad, both profligate and prolific, who spent many years in a Debtor’s Prison.

One popular apparently dazzling route for investments is the yellow metal in India. Or real estate. BOTH are unwise, though not idiotic, investments because they fetch a reasonable resale price only after a passage of time, while your and my lifespans are short.

If all the gold stashed away in the cellars of our citizens is collected, it may be far taller than Fort Knox. If this is kept as reserve and our currency is enhanced in its basic value, we may be stronger in currency than even the US too. If part of its Rupee value is used for national development, say through Sovereign Bonds, India shall have not only Bullet trains a planet but also strong bridges, smooth roads, zero housing challenge and optimal use of her land mass.

That it is not happening is simply because our women especially remain glued to the metal till they die off.

What you see on the surface is credit or debit cards being swiped or some paper scraps being exchanged for a service. Or it may be mint fresh currency notes emerging from an ATM machine’s belly .Both the parents and the kids are in the dark about what is happening behind the scenes.

Money related information must start at the secondary school level and delivered in small practical doses and carried on through college, till the kid starts earning money on his own. Perhaps the kid must be guided in the first few months lay a strong foundation for his future plans like purchasing or constructing a house , having enough money to meet relocation expenses in a contingency , etc.

Indian education system thwarts rather than nurtures personal dream fulfilment in a meaningful manner; this is precisely why we have English Literature post graduate serving as bus conductors, and globally successful sports and athletic champions of yesterday earning their keep as fishermen.

Discuss the uses of money at your home on a regular basis with easily comprehensible examples. Help your kids play with imaginary amounts and how toniest them so that they can obtain a certain amount.

Teaching how to respect other opinions:

Single kids (which many successful households aims at having)  grow up with some quantum of personal selfishness and introvert mindset; this can’t be avoided till the kid is enrolled at a school and is helped to acquire many good friends from the classmates. By way of a foundation he or she must be imparted the social skills needed to mingle with others without feeling any allergy or prejudice.

Intolerance—of any kind, say of a different faith, different manner of dressing , or different language– can wreak havoc of course but unluckily enough that is precisely what surrounds us today both online and offline. It can take a host of varied avatars –bullying, murdering someone for a silly reason, threatening and raping or molestation of the weaker person. Ideally a small group or bevy is needed to infuse in the kid a feeling of respect for differences of opinion.

Many parents seek to teach their kids to behave, right from a young age within homes but with not much success as long as they fail to set an example of the same. Family is where this must begin of course but then it’s at school that the kid spends most of his daytime. So the schools must play a major role in molding the kids in a sensible manner on their own.

Time was when Moral Science used to be a regular feature of many successful schools in India. Kids used to be imparted a dose of basic ethics, a sense of right and wrong, good and evil, acceptable and unacceptable , and sinful or righteous .Values and life lessons also used to be included in this session’s curriculum. Many wise teachers agree on the advisability of having such an input facility at school level but only if the managements are progressive enough. It’s an open secret that many nerds and geeks of today are hopelessly introvert, pitiably naïve hubbies or wives, unequipped home makers, silly moms, or tyrannical dads and easily given to suicidal inclinations with no confidence in living itself.

After all won’t all parents agree on the point that the primary aim and objective of education itself is to turn out good sensible human beings? Isn’t a value-based education proves necessary to achieve this end? Don’t you also think that kids must learn how to behave acceptably, speak effectively and courteously to others?

Sadly this became a controversial subject in this country for the most ridiculous of reasons-viz. Faith Conversion possibility—and it got scrapped.

Nurturing the Reasoning Faculty:

Man is, they tell me, a reasoning animal, and hence different from other animals on this planet. I find this rather difficult to believe simply because across this country India I have witnessed countless instances of human going crazy over trifles and making mountains out of molehills with zero equipoise.

It’s of primal importance to nurture the reasoning faculty in all kids as kids because they tend to fall into numerous follies otherwise.

Encourage kids to ask questions about the myths and legends that you are traditionally bound to.

Ask him what really matters-goodness or looks. Ask him questions that trigger his thinking faculty.

Explain to him the possibility of accidents getting unusual importance (E.g. A ball behaving not as expected or a batsman scoring a sixer without intending to!)  when you play cricket, and also of cool logic when you play tennis with him.

Tell him that life itself is accidental in many aspects, as you see in a game of Snakes and ladders.

Infusing the Human Touch:

All human faiths and holy books maintain a single objective: to ensure that the Human Touch doesn’t go out of a believer’s eyes ever.

However, what we can observe today around us, especially in a multi faith country like India, is that .the blind and deaf believers in one faith community go on a rampage and seek to eliminate the other faiths and the individuals believing in them, to the exclusion of all human sympathy.

Not only do they scream out the wildest and most irrational things in a raucous tone but also strain to implement their hidden agenda for having a single faith nation if they can, without factoring in either the country’s long history of playing host to many faiths but also a genial hostess to many persons from far alien regions of the planet.

These fanatics are incapable of having a holistic, acknowledging and accommodative vision. Hence its necessity in all our successors in this country.

Mentally ill women get assaulted for no reason, persons fallen from high buildings get ignored, and commuters fall off from buses on the run because the vehicle remained unattended to by mechanics for long. Many members of a community that seek to ensure their daily income through sale or transportation of to-be slaughtered cattle of meat get lynched too. A political party conspires to take over a holy place by brainwashing naïve women and men. Temples, churches or mosques get torched or razed down in mob fury—and local police stand and watch. A PM, supposed to inspire through his weekly chat, plays partisan in a veiled manner too.

And all this happens in a democracy, not a tyranny or an African tribal enclave or in a German death camp!

In front of us stands the classic deity with his infinite cool and aplomb-Lord Krishna of the Mahabharatha. Like Jesus, not in the least perturbed by the choppy waves of the Sea of Galilee, thanks to His basic self-possession, Krishna advises us through repeated demonstrations of the plus points of remaining detached from ups and downs and impulses and temptations. India travels along a highly choppy Sea of Galilee today and its paramount that you and I remain self-possessed at all times.

Make it a monthly habit to take your kid along with some sweetmeats for the destitute in an Old Age Home or an orphanage.

Persuade him through an initial demonstration of how one can soothe and comfort and console through gifting these to every person there, and then chatting gently with them.

Pay for a community feast @ some local Polio Home or a retreat for the mentally-retarded women.

Celebrate your kid’s birthdays there.

Share the meals along with them too and if you can feed one of them.

Guide your kid as a knowing parent towards human sympathy and empathy for others less luckily endowed, and their value all through his or her life on earth!

Go on with this habit till your kid comes of age and takes off into some career of walk of his or her choice.

Minimizing the kid’s fear of Death:

This is important, despite the kid being too young to think of it simply because he gets chances to see his aged relatives die off and disappear one after another. He is not fully aware of what is happening to those persons all so suddenly but then he can think vaguely about it.

Don’t make it too fearsome or go on a philosophical route, but just say that it’s a chemical process that ends this life; use this definition to turn his or her focus to THIS LIFE. At the end of the day you and I have only THIS LIFE, within our body. Ignoring it in preference to pursuit of any soul is a waste of time and energy. If you and I wish to be recalled we must DO something remarkable within our lifetime, not after it. Baseless notions like Rebirth, Eternal recycling of birth and death and soul being immortal must not be let in to kill the kid’s intense curiosity to know more and more. Nor should these be permitted to dampen his animal spirits and native enthusiasm.

(To be continued)