Teaching good and bad to Children

One of the most difficult phase of your(mine too) life is teaching your child(ren) what is good and what is bad. Every parent and child goes through this phase and very few parents are successful in this task. I am not complaining that parents don't  do their job properly, but they don't do it in the right way. And the result you see it in the children. 

Don't you find your friends/colleagues/neighbors complaining that his/her child doesn't obey to what they say ? Parents just see the result part of it, what one should be thinking is "why" is the child not obeying even after explaining things. Do you get the drift ? This is when the parents will get an understanding and find the exact solution. Even I have been through this phase and still haven't come out of it yet. But I think I got an answer, just need to implement it. Hopefully I will be successful in teaching Iksha the good and bad part of life.

And wait, I am not done here, read on. If you find this helpful, then please thank Lakshmi, who shared and made me realize the things i was doing in a wrong way.

Normally, we elders (consider aged above 18), understand what is told to us in plain simple words. Whereas children don't. They do understand, but don't realize. This is the gap between elders and children. So how do you fill this gap ? You need to tell a story. 

Let me give an example. How do you tell a child that eating chocolate is bad ? You must have definitely told this a thousand times and your child must have eaten chocolate thousand and one times. You will always think that your child doesn't listen to you at all, he is ill mannered, he doesn't have understanding capacity and what not complaints against him go on air. Did you ever ask yourself "why doesn't the child understand" ? Now try to make a story of a boy who eats lot of chocolates. The story should go through lot of phases like he liking chocolates, eating it everyday, then getting a bad tooth, visiting a doctor, tooth decaying, show some pictures of bad tooth, then the tooth getting removed and the pain the boy goes through after removing the tooth and all in a dramatic way. The child will be able to relate to this story very well and the next time he gets a chocolate, he will definitely think of the boy's situation who ate lot of chocolates. Probably, your child will reduce eating chocolate, which is what you expect your child to do. 

Don't expect overnight results. Your child will take some time to learn things. 

You may ask, this is just an example of chocolate, how do I teach him/her what is good and bad ? Well, my friend taught me that too. What Lakshmi says is - tell the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata. These stories have a lot of good and bad characters. You need to tell your child that this person is good and give the proper reason. Tell your child that this person is bad and give the proper reason. So the child will be able to relate the things that he/she does in real life and will definitely think that doing this is good, doing this is bad. FYI, there is a publication called Amar Chithra Katha, which publishes these stories with pictures. You can find many other stories and publication. 

During Lakshmi's visit to Bangalore, she gifted me one of these books, the Ramayana. That day I opened the book and started telling the story to Iksha. She was actually interested in listening to story. But I didn't know what to tell her. Every page I was going through had no meaning, I thought. What should I tell Iksha that Dasharatha, father of Rama, had 3 wives ? Kaikeyi plotted to send Rama to vanasa for 14 years ? And Ravana kidnapped Sita to marry her ? Iksha would have not related to none of these. The very next day I called up Lakshmi and asked "what book did you give me? this story is useless for Iksha!". 

This is when Lakshmi explained me everything that you read above and much more. Since then I have been finding the moral of the story in each story, good and bad in each character, if you have read my Talaash post you would understand.

Lastly, I would like to thank Lakshmi for teaching me all this. Thanks a lot Lakshmi.