Bringing Up Children

The imprisonment of the Indian couple in Norway had brought forth the topic of brining up children by the parents, rights and responsibilities of parents and rights of children.  Children are innocent and do not understand the consequences of their acts. It becomes the responsibility of the parents to guide them.  This requires lot of patience.  Children sometimes unknowingly do acts that upset parents socially and emotionally.    Young parents, under stress sometimes punish kids severely, often injuring the child physically or mentally.  Severity of punishment causing physical or mental trauma is due to lack of awareness in the parent. 

To take up any skilled or intellectual job, appropriate education and training is mandatory.  Parenting is a serious intellectual and skilled job often taxing physical and mental abilities.  But, generally it is taken as natural phenomenon.  Other than human beings, this is quite natural and lasts only until the offspring learns to move on its own and learn to procure food for it.  Human parenting is more complicated in this ever changing world.  Parents always want their child to be the best in the society and wants to train, often overburdening the child’s abilities.  Inability to conform to parental requisition often leads to mental disturbances in the child.  Lacking intelligence and physical strength to protest the child suffers.  This suffering will have a bearing on the behavior and character of the person in future.  Family environment, love and affection showered by the parents, along with their type and extent of punishments will impact the child’s ability to adjust in life and society in future. 

In India it is considered that parents have all rights on the children, any time they have to abide by parents’ decision.  ‘Spare the rod, spoil the child’, is very much imbibed in the Indian psyche.  To control the child from doing undesirable things, often, physically traumatizing punishments are given.  They forget these often leave mental scars.  Usually in joint families elderly members intervene in such conditions.  In the nuclear families, ambitious young couples, sometimes, do not understand their limitations in treating the children in difficult situations.  People outside the family intervene only when things are gross.  Whatever may be the difficulty in bringing up the children, inflicting physical injury is seriously bad parenting.  In such condition, the family, parents and children need good counseling.

Education and maturity of the person and giving birth to child only when desired goes a long way in bringing up children.  Also, preconception and postnatal counseling preparing for parenting and to cope up with its stress will be helpful to young parents.

The Indian couple, being young and living away from native land, trying to adjust to different culture might have had immense stress.  To live with a child with mental compromises could have made them to take extreme steps so as to make the child disciplined and well adaptable as to his age and place. The extent of physical trauma, resulting mental agony and fear of parents in the kid is really pathetic.  This situation did rise because of the lack of understanding in the couple.  They did need some strong counseling.  The kid though scared still attached to parents.  Separation of kids from the parents is traumatizing to entire family.  This again will affect the children in their development.  By now the couple had learnt their lesson.  Separation of children from parents is becoming punishment to children also.  I hope the couple will be released earliest and take care of the children with lots of affection and understanding.

A child with all the experiences since birth will grow into a man/woman.  This will have a bearing on their parenting.  ‘A child is the father of a man’.