Practice What You Preach!

I don’t think there is anyone in this world who has not heard this from the parents – You don’t listen to us. You have bad manners, you have no etiquettes etc. Also, somehow, others’ children are always better behaved and well-mannered than ours.

We always tend to believe that it is the children who are the problem. That no matter how many times we tell them, they just don’t seem to learn. But wait. Have we ever heard of “practice what you preach”?

I have seen many a households with the above description. The parents shout at each other with all their might in front of the kids, but want the kids to be soft spoken. They blatantly lie to neighbors and relatives and then expect the children to come back home and tell them everything. They lose their temper at the drop of a hat, but expect the children to hear them out, every single time, all the time. Fair not, you think?

Children have no sense of what constitutes moral, immoral, decent, indecent, fair, skewed, truth or lie. They see parents around going about their lives in a certain way. In a seemingly innocuous way, they pick up the same life skills while the parents are blissfully unaware. The parents may think the child is too young to care. But yes, the child is too young and that’s the truth. And that (s)he is willing to learn and absorb as much as he can to survive the world. The children will never do as “told”. They will always do as they “see”. Don’t be too surprised if the next time you shout, your child shouts back at you. It does not mean, in any way, that he does not respect you. It means that he has associated shouting and raising his voice when in disagreement. Instead of reprimanding your child to correct his behavior, what really needs to be done is introspection by your own self. Do you really want to see your own insecurities and fallacies in your child’s behavior as well? Do you want him to become your reflection too? And not in a good way?

I have realized this after growing up myself. Surprisingly (or rather not) I tend to give the same kind of reaction my parents would have given under a certain circumstance. And that’s what led me to believe – that no matter what we preach, practice it we must, if we want our child to follow.
I read this great saying. “Your children become what you are. So become what you want your children to be” Isn’t that absolutely true? If you want your child to be truthful, you will have to be truthful too. If you want them to have good manners, you must speak to each other with due respect too. if you want them to listen to you, listen to them first.

Ghata has been quite the center of attention during her school and college days due to her unique name, but now she enjoys her new found title of Mommy to her 5 month old hyperactive princess. She is an Engineering Graduate and works with an MNC for a living. But what she really loves is reading books, spending time with her baby and writing about anything that catches her fancy. She blogs at My World. Also, she is the author of a future bestseller. At least in her head 🙂