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As parents, we make decisions for our kids on a daily basis from what they wear, eat, act and sometimes, how they react to situations. While taking care of them (yes, in Pakistan, treating your child as a puppet is known as taking care of them), we usually forget that they are human beings, not things or trophies that we own.
Well, in some way, they are like our precious trophies. We are usually remaking ourselves, things we think our parents didn’t prepare us for, we are rewriting the history of our ourselves which we ignore that they are born with their own genetic makeup. What dilemma we parents face or fear most is that someday, they will start making their own decisions and we will no more be important to them.
In our society, we try our best to make a child as dependent as possible by coming up with excuses like, “no he can’t put food himself in the plate”. I know, in our culture, serving kids on their plates is normal, instead, it is more like an expression of affection.
As time goes by and kids start growing up, technically, we should give them space for their own decision making. Otherwise, we raise up weirdos who even after completing their degrees and entering into their practical lives, would be indecisive with the tag of: “My parents are alive and I don’t want to hurt them by making my own decisions”.
As the children grow up, they listen to our emotional blackmailing or subtle passive threats like, “Haan haan ab hum se kyun pooch gee”, “Bohat bare hogae hain” or “Mai apna doodh maaf nai karoon ge (hahaha, I know it’s cliché)”, on a day to day basis. But our society is incomplete without such threats. Isn’t it?
However, by threatening them or joking around (as parents quote it), what is it that we’re actually doing? We are raising unstable, indecisive grownups who think that by not conforming or complying to parents or authority figures, they are failing. And as a member of society think that soon they will have a failed society with unstable family values; with a lot of conflicts.
Now, the question is, when do conflicts arise? Conflicts will arise when two spouses have to make others happy more than each other. That’s what we parents are doing by asking too much from our kids, by asking them to be perfect, by asking them to be what they can’t be. And by doing this, we force their self-esteem on the lowest levels, we tend to raise kids with behavior issues who think they are entitled to each and everything, won’t ever develop any coping strategies. As a result, they will be more prone to physical ailments which trigger from stress like diabetes and ulcers. It also causes many psychological issues.
To stop this chain reaction, what we can do is take care of them immensely but, we should stop spoon-feeding them. It’s pretty obvious that in the beginning, it will be hard for them to survive on their own, but you are making their future secure. Even animals let their children explore on their own. We are making a terrible mistake by the way we’re raising our children nowadays. I know there is no perfect formula for raising our kids but there are certain ways to raise a kid in many ideologies and faiths. What we have to do is stop overcompensating over oneself through your child.
