WHY NOBODY LISTENS TO THEM?

 

            We always have the habit of talking about ourselves. Our wishes our rights. We never talk speak about children’s rights. May be because we as elders think that we can make better decisions for them and hence we impose our thoughts on them. But at the same time we do speak about their rights once in a blue moon and that too it is limited to Right to Education and Health, Malnutrition, etc. What about the remaining? Oh yeah many of us are not even aware about the rights of children. I am no different even I was unaware until I happened to appear a seminar, wherein I got to know that there are around 50+ child rights. Yes its 50+, and we barely know few.

          Among so many rights one that is really important in today’s time is right to be heard. Now you just like that can’t say that we listen to our children. No we don’t unless it is for our benefit. For an instance a family goes out for buying something like a mobile or car or laptop, the parent’s automatically tend to ask their child “beta which has good features?” or “what do you think which we should buy?”. But if the same child suggests you something in any other decision you end up saying “you don’t know anything, you are just a child”. I guess many would have come across these kind of situations.

          Listening to children is really essential for parents. No, not everything. Like if a child wants to eat junk food, wants to play video game throughout the day, wants to party hard, doesn’t want to study- parents shouldn’t listen to these things. They should strike a perfect balance between being a friend and a parent. But make sure that don’t be too friendly so that you are taken for granted or be too strict that you become scary. Balancing is an art. Once you balance it you will find yourself well informed about what your child is all up to. S/he will open up to share things with you. Everybody expects their child to be perfect and the definition of perfect varies from person to person and hence for their personal perfectness they impose their own rules and regulations on their children. These restrictions lead to hesitation and fear of sharing which further causing children to hide things and hence leading to wrong decisions. Even many children who run out of their homes give either money or not being heard or treated properly as their reason for their runaway. And the ratio is very high. And every child who runs is not always lucky enough to be successful as shown in Bollywood movies the truth is far different.

          Every parents does this for their Childs good. But as the time is changing parents also need to change. Being a parents never build up an invisible wall around you so that it keeps your children away from reaching you. Like this happens many times, NEVER EVER make your child feel humiliated or feel low in a public sphere. If a child commits a mistake neither ignore nor blame instead make them realise by giving reasons why it’s a mistake. When I say all this I am nowhere against interventions. Interventions are really important but as a parent, they should know how to interfere and when to interfere. Deal with your child as per their comfort. For which you need to develop a bond. Once the bond is developed you will be in the loop of their activities. Exposure and Experimentations should be encouraged. Allow them to explore themselves. Spoon feeding should be avoided, make them self-dependent.