Nurturing Confident Children – Part 2

Below are a few behaviours, some of which are inter-connected and overlap. If your child displays any of these behaviours, it may be a warning sign for cosseting. Wake up and act before it’s too late.

1) Inability to take a decision. If the child always asks before taking even the simplest of decision, or looks around for approval from an adult before taking a decision, it may be a sign that things are always decided for him.

2) If the child feels lost in the absence of parents, in spite of being with familiar people and other family members, it’s probably because he has no clue of what to do with regard to anything. That may be because things are always done for him, and provided on a platter. 

3) If the child is fearful, it may be because the parents are overprotective and often, fearful themselves. Anxious parents lead to anxious children. 

4) Inability to take a joke. If the child withdraws into a shell or cries on being teased a little, it might be that the child lacks in self-confidence. We’re not talking of mean behaviour or bullying, just simple, harmless humour. 

5) If the child resists helping out or doing simple chores for others, it could be that the child has been spoiled, and has never shouldered any responsibility. 

6) If the child controls the parents, the child is certainly pampered. The threat of a tantrum in a public place, pretending to throw up when asked to finish his food, bargaining with the parent to do as told are a few examples. 

7) Fear of failure is another sign of cosseting. Such children have been sheltered from failures, as they have never been left to fend for themselves or sort out their problems. It’s always Daddy/Mummy who sorts things out for them, often even before something happens. 

8) The inability to share is again a sign of over-indulgence – always getting what they want, and more so, having it to themselves. While this may be more common in case of single children, it is not uncommon in children with siblings.

While it’s good to start at a young age, it’s never too late. If you find yourself in the sinking sands of over-parenting, bail yourself and your child out now!

‘Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.’ — Elbert Hubbard

Nurturing Confident Children – Part 1

‘In the end, it is not what we do for our children, but what we have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings’, said the columnist Ann Launders, and rightly so. That’s also what will determine whether the adult child is grateful and thankful to the parents or detests them for having messed them up with their overbearing love.

Parents often confuse love and care with indulgence and pampering. Some parents even experience guilt for not doing something for the child, or for making the child do something. The trick is in balancing the act and being aware of whether your parenting is helping the child or squashing his individuality and confidence.

Typical mollycoddling involves the following –

a) Excessive hand-holding – Taking over when the child attempts to do something.

b) Being overprotective – Some parents never let the child out of sight, they are always watched, picked up when they fall, cautioned.

c) Micro-management – There are parents who micro-manage every single facet of the child’s life, from something as simple as buttoning the 10-year-old’s shirt to buttering his bread!

d) Over directive – They just can’t stop themselves from constantly giving directions, even for things the child has been doing on his own since years.

e) Gratification of the child’s every demand – Some parents confuse love with gratification of demands. Whether instant or delayed, gratification of every single demand is detrimental to the child’s well-being and is certainly no sign of parental love.

‘Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.’ — Bill Ayers

The Smell of Good Times

 

Ah! The whiff of freshly brewed coffee while lazing in bed.

Hmm…the aroma of oven fresh cake.

Oof! The stink of garbage as you cross the garbage dump.

Oh no! The odour of leaking gas!

The olfactory sense is not one that gets much attention. It may not even be considered an important one, in comparison to the rest. Yet, think about it…lack of the smelling sense could take the fragrance out of our lives, literally!

We can learn a lot by the smell of things, probably more than by the visual or textural experience. Smells allow us an experience – both pleasant and otherwise, before it becomes concrete and tangible. For e.g., a red-coloured powder could be anything. But a single sniff will warn you that it’s chilli powder, without having to suffer its sting on your tongue. Colourless toxic gases that have a smell can be sniffed out even by a layman, in the absence of scientific tools. It’s not uncommon to have people smell something burning, much before they spot the source.

Often, we are led by our nose to sniff out danger before we see or feel it. What a catastrophe it would be, if we couldn’t smell the gas leaking in our kitchen! Or the bread burning in the oven! Or… (eeew!) the queer smell of food gone bad before we take a bite! Recent research studies show that fear reactions can occur at the sensory level, even before the brain has had the opportunity to interpret that the odour could mean trouble. No wonder that the English language has an idiom, ‘to smell out danger’.

Let’s think of our childhood. Most of our memories are accompanied by a particular smell. My first thoughts are full of the light floral fragrance of my mum’s Yardley talcum powder as I rested my head on her shoulder, the Old Spice cologne when I snuggled up with my Dad, the peculiar comforting smell of my nanny, the smell of earth as we entered my mother’s village… Sigh… the sweet scent of memories. On the flip side, smells can bring back painful, fearful memories too! For instance, the smell of diesel fumes for a soldier or the smell of smoke for a burns victim. Would memories be as intense, in the absence of smells?

Kumar chetta, the cook at Chinmaya Heritage Centre in Chennai, knows just by the aroma, whether the coffee has enough sugar or not! Unbelievable but true! My favourite Aunt Rekha, was such a skilled cook, she could rattle out the ingredients of a dish with just a sniff. Knowing whether a dish is ready by the aroma is one thing, but to guess all the ingredients? Mind-blowing!

Observe shoppers in the marketplace. Many will sniff a fruit to know whether it is ready for consumption. My Dad knows the variety of a mango and its ripeness with a whiff. Now that’s one skill I have kind of developed by sniffing around with him! Does that mean this is a skill that can be refined with practice? Certainly. In the movie ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’, it is interesting to watch how the protagonist’s mother trains him to cook, with much focus on the olfactory sense, more than any other.