Nine Essentials for Contented Living

Health enough to make work a pleasure.

Wealth enough to support your needs.

Strength enough to battle difficulties and overcome them.

Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them.

Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished.

Clarity enough to see some good in your neighbor.

Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others.

Faith enough to make real the things of God.

Hope enough to remove all anxious fears confronting the future.

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Our kids – our mirror

 

We send our kids to the best schools we can afford. We make sure their food is nutritious, we organize abacus lessons, music classes, private tuitions and if they need it, we take them to the best known paediatrician for any of their physical ailments. We give in to their pleas for the latest fashion clothing and gadgets, and frequently fall for their pleas for fast food. All this makes it abundantly clear that we love them very much and want the very best for them.

Our most noble intention behind all this is our 'need to see them happy'.

Today I want to discuss other aspects of helping them grow up well and happy. And all of these have to do with us, and not with them.

This asks for a lot of introspection – looking inside ourselves

What does your own happiness depend on? Do you need your external circumstances to be just so in order to be happy? Or have you found the way to being happy no matter what the external circumstances? In other words, have you worked on yourself enough to depend on yourself for your happiness?

Are you happy being what you really are? Or have we fallen into the trap of posing to be happy by aligning ourselves to certain norms and standards set out as parameters of success and happiness?

You always have a choice

What kind of choices do you make? How much responsibility do you take for resolving your own issues? When you make your choices - every day - during your entire life, do you remember to be aware in order to recognize that at each step of the way you always have alternatives? Do you remember that you are responsible for everything you feel, think, say, and do?

In other words, you need not yell, you need not cry, you need not despair, you need not fear, you need not resort to anger, because you always have another alternative.

As the saying goes 'Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional'. In any situation in life, troubles abound but our choices make all the difference. If we decide to take things head-on, we are bound to find workable alternatives.

Are we in our lives behaving so as to show our children 'to look for alternatives' or we're surrendering to be victims of our circumstances?

Do you carry emotional baggage?

Do you tend to blame others? Are you a victim of events or people in your life? Can you forgive? What you show your child by one or the other mode of behaviour, will, in some ways, determine his/her chance at happiness now and in the future. If you carry your past along, your children learn to do the same. Learn to live in the present- remember 'the past is gone – but the present is a gift'. Learn not to blame, no matter what - stop being a victim, no matter what - and begin to forgive, no matter what - in order to teach all of this to your child by virtue of your own example!

Walking Your Talk

Do you walk your talk? Do you say one thing and do another? Are you authentic? Are you really the way you portray yourself to be? Discover yourself because only if you do that, can you really walk your talk and in the process show your child what it means to be authentic. Your children will learn to honour you and your word if they see that you mean what you say.

Transparency

Be open with your children! Show them that you can make mistakes, or that you can learn from them. Show them that you are open to being open, and that you invite openness from them, no matter what they want to confide in you! Doing this is both easy and hard. It's easy because it is really just a question of choosing to be like this, but it's hard because in order to be like this, you must also choose to become self-aware and conscious at all times, choose to make yourself responsible for all that you feel, think, say, and do, and hence choose to work on all the those aspects

Value people more than things

There'll be umpteen situations when they will damage things you like, things that they like, ones which are rare, others that are expensive- but at the end of it they are only 'material things'. If you reprimand your child, spouse or helper unduly for the loss, they are bound to learn to value them more than people. With kids around keep precious things out of reach and despite due precaution if something is damaged, see it as an opportunity to replace it with something better- letting her down will only distance her from you.

So, if you want your children to grow up to be exceptional kids, look within, work on yourself, become congruent, love yourself and realize that every positive thing you do in order to improve yourself will have a ripple effect on the lives of all those you touch.

You have so many gifts to give your child. No one expects you to be perfect. But you can start the road towards the goal of growth, self awareness, and loving yourself by beginning today with the first step. That first step is simply remembering to be conscious, and when you forget, forgiving yourself for forgetting, but praising yourself for at least having remembered that you forgot to remember to be conscious. And then doing it all over again...

The more time you spend being conscious, the more quickly you will reach the goal of your own inner freedom, and the more quickly you will reach the goal of being able to offer your child the gift of your example with all of this.

Examination anxiety

Every year this time round there is a lot of talk of 'exam stress' or 'exam anxiety'. Any event that tests our abilities and attracts the attention of everyone around us is bound to make anyone anxious. I agree that so much of what one can do in the future depends upon how a child performs at this point. But don't you feel that if children were allowed to take all their exams including the boards as only a measure of how much of what they have learned in the whole academic year - a mere evaluation or assessment for their own understanding of their achievement level rather than a matter of life and death- more than half the problem is taken care of?
Why fret about exam anxiety - in the process creating some more, even for the confident students?

Children need to be taught to first and foremost set long term and short term goals for themselves. In view of the long term goal, their success at the short term goal is ensured by systematic stepwise progression. In this regard proper time management and study skills need to be inculcated very early in the academic pursuit.

Anxiety is a normal phenomenon that every individual is bound to face before any performance. And we all know that some amount of anxiety is necessary for optimal performance. The point is that no child can suddenly fall prey to overwhelming anxiety. There are some characteristic features in children who would succumb to the pressure. The signs of difficulties would be visible very early in their academic history. It is because they are overlooked in the earlier classes that they take on a full- blown shape at the time when internal and external pressures to perform peak.

Catch the early signs of exam anxiety-
Consistent inability of a child to perform in one or more subjects.
Poor performance despite additional help (tuitions/coaching)
Physical illness just before tests on repeated occasions.
Disinterest in school and other related activities.
Excessive crying/nervousness before exams.
Inability to concentrate and frequent forgetfulness.
A tendency to hide homework diaries, report cards and test papers.

And in extreme cases avoidance of school and other social activities.

 

For those parents whose children are going to take exams soon:

Let your children go at their own pace.

Help them organize themselves in such a way that they can at least cover the portion of their syllabus that they already know, well. E.g. your child has set herself a target of achieving 60% in her exams- instead of insisting on her preparing the complete syllabus, have her prepare 70% of her syllabus very well. This will ensure that she can answer questions from that portion well and get the desired result.

Break up the topic into smaller chunks and take frequent short breaks between topics.

Give her lots of fluids- it helps fight lethargy and enhances alertness.

Your child must take adequate rest before the exam.

Let go of your anxiety – only then can you help your child.

 

All the best.