How to work towards harmony and happiness in parent-children relationships
Parents are the most precious assets in any child's life. It is they who provide their child or children all the emotional, financial and social security and also matter so much in their upbringing and happiness. However, bonding is under severe stress today. This article is about taking steps towards harmony and happiness in parent-children relationships.
Introduction
It is a fact of life that a good family background always means that there is perfect chemistry working between father and mother. If this is absent or inadequate in some way, the children are affected in one way or the other. As it turns out, the stresses and strains of modern life seem to be taking a toll on both parents in most homes.
Be that as it may, the happiness and harmony in parent-children relationships can be worked on, so a) Do not fight in presence of children b) Have compulsorily dinner time every day c) Allow children to express themselves d) Be friends, philosophers, and guides to teenage children e) Provide emotional support but be flexible.Do not fight in presence of children
Many parents do this mistake many a time in their lives. They keep on doing this mistake again and again. With disastrous consequences. I have seen many instances where children who are between 12 to 15 years of age, seeking counseling support, as they had some emotional trauma or the other in terms of observing some serious fight between their parents. This often happens over ten continuous days. And then the parents got involved in the counseling sessions and a greater clarity emerged as to what went wrong.
It is wise to totally avoid fighting in the presence of children. If the children are less than five or seven years old, the problem becomes more acute. And the children at such an age often tend to perceive the problem in the framework of their own mental frameworks. If some idea starts flowing from their friends, the children sometimes become used to do undesirable things. For example, teenage children land in the bad company of friends who teach them how to steal money from home, effectively using the sixty minutes the parents spend in fighting with each other. Hence, the best thing that the parents should do is to totally avoid fighting with each other in the presence of their children.Have compulsory dinner time everyday
This is another important step. The parents should make it a point to spend the vital thirty minutes of dinner time with their children. If either parent is on your within the country or abroad, they should make it a point to allow the children to share their own experiences and offer them whatever support is needed in terms of getting their homework or project work done and so on. I have seen very intelligent parents spending quality time in helping their children get to understand the basics of economics or banking transactions or even picking up life skills like doing basic electrical work on the weekends. Planning for these activities always happens during dinner time and the active involvement of children.Allow children to express themselves
An increasingly significant number of parents are now encouraging the natural talents of children to be given a good shape. There are good singers, dancers, painters and even budding scientists who are less than ten years old. This has been made possible only because of the changed attitudes of parents. In the main, the parents are totally out of the engineer-doctor obsession that clouded their minds for such a long time. That the alternate professions that are opening-up with a global scope have now finally dawned upon them.
Careers in media management, event management, interior design, fashion design, journalism, capital markets, development economics and the like, now offer salaries and perks that are comparable to those available to engineer-MBAs, even from the IIMs. This is one fact that has now been welcomed by parents like never before. Be friends, philosophers, and guides to teenage children
When children reach the teenage. thy need plenty of emotional support. They are often confused when their sexual desires open up. They do not even understand the biological changes taking place in them. They need constant counseling.
The best option available to parents is to act as friends, philosophers, and guides. Trying to discipline them will not work. Teenagers are often influenced by classmates and enjoy their newfound freedom. They are not in any mood to listen to any advice from parents. In fact, many love affairs end up in suicides when there is total immaturity. The parents should talk over to each child and impress upon him or her to really take it easy and move on with life. Constant communication as a friend helps in a big way. Children start seeing either parent as "one among us". This is one sure way of enabling the opening up of channels of communication. It is also a stage when children become very talkative and are happy discussing the love affairs of their classmates for any number of hours. There is an excitement in whatever they do. In fact, most of their distractions are fuelled by television serials and harmful movies that do not teach them anything good.
The parents need to be very patient and communicate every detail with each of their children. Normally, the number of hours that both parents need to spend with teenage children should be triple that of normal time. Weekends are particularly important. Parents will also do well to enquire regularly with teachers and then take serious note of any distraction. Doing so will enable them to take swift action and avoid late action that often becomes too late. They should also know the names and particulars of close friends and be doubly careful about those who are likely to have harmful influences on children.
In particular, teenage is one vital transition phase in the lives of any child. It is at this age that children take to social media and get involved in all sorts of activities. While a little involvement in social media is fine, when it becomes an obsession, things take an ugly turn. It is often a fact of life that social media is now being misused by unscrupulous persons who are out to exploit teenagers. It is vital that parents exercise absolute control here and give their children the confidence to tackle any problem.Provide emotional support but be flexible
This is in fact even more important after the children reach the age of twenty. Once they enter college, a new world opens up. There are broad-minded parents who even encourage inter-state marriages based on campus romance. The boy often gets to meet a junior girl in the same college, often two thousand kilometers away from where the parents stay. The children are often mature enough to list down their priorities and even postpone their emotional involvement until they are well settled.
It is here that the role of parents becomes crucial. After all, it is the happiness of children that is quite important in any marriage. It is the ultimate litmus test. It is one vital change where the emotional support of parents becomes vital. Even after marriage, emotional support in terms of taking care of grand-children becomes vital. However, some flexibility is always seen. In most cases, the children also understand that the parents also need some amount of privacy and space to peacefully retire and spend hours in solitude. Everything can work well when the communication channels between parents and their children are active and healthy at all times. Conclusion
Given the complexities of modern times, based on a number of real-life observations of successful parent-children relationships, some vital steps that need to be taken by parents, have been discussed in some detail in the aforesaid paragraphs. When parents understand the deep implications of their role, everything will fall in place.
The author has provided good tips for maintaining harmony between the parent and children. The home is the first school for the child and it is natural that he learns the basic traits from there only. It is said that the child mimics what he sees happening in front of him whether it is right or wrong. This is an animal type of instinct and is commonly seen in the children while growing up. Nowadays many husbands and wives are working and the responsibility of children is either with the maidservant or some people simply admit the children in boarding schools. So somehow in the modern times, we are missing the element of a joint family where an environment of cultural growth is provided to the children. In isolation, children grow in very strange ways and then the same parent starts complaining about it in a loud voice. The concept of nuclear families has added fuel to this fire and children are totally cut off from the love and affection of their grandparents. It is not a healthy situation but the pangs of changing times have to be tolerated by human society only.