Can we redefine the frame of reference for our children?
Richard Williams, father of Serena and Venus Williams, aspired for his daughters to be professional tennis players and he had a plan in place even before they were born.
Sushila Viswanathan, mother of chess champion Viswanathan Anand, discovered her son’s interest in chess when he was merely five. She taught him basic moves and stood by him in his journey of being a five-time world chess champion.
Lewis Hamilton’s father bought him a radio-controlled car when he was five. Hamilton stood second in national BRCA championship the next year while competing with adults. His father got him a go-kart when he was six. Hamilton, British racing driver, needs no introduction today.
We have many such examples arounds us of individuals whose lives got shaped by the choices made by their parents. Parents chose to introduce a certain sports or activity to their children at a young age and that determined the trajectory of their life to a great extent.
Imagine if someone plucked you from your own life and put you in another frame of reference. Some other family, upbringing, education, exposure, circle of friends, life experiences, perhaps even a different physical body! Would you then be the same person as you are today? Possibly not.
We get shaped and defined very deeply by our life experiences.
Same is true for our children. As parents, we are limited by our own life experiences and personalities we have molded into. We raise our children with these constraints and lead them to believe in a certain world view.
It is time we raise the bar for ourselves, and we question ourselves about our parenting style. We have a very important job at hand — we are nurturing the next generation, and it is our responsibility to do our best.
So, are we doing our best? Or is it that we are mindlessly going about parenting, following the herd, as we stumble in our own journey marred with responsibilities that come with adulthood. It is time with ask some of these questions.
“Raise yourself before you raise your kids.” — Sadhguru
We need to invest in ourselves, be better than just being mediocre and consciously strive to be better as parents. Of course, parenting can never be totally perfect or right — and thank God for that. We are humans raising humans after all who are allowed to commit their own share of follies and be human at the end of the day.
