A home for a child!

A butterfly emerges from a cocoon after a period of hibernation. It is by then it becomes elegant and colourful. The cocoon helps in the formative process of a pupa becoming a butterfly.

Let me say a word or two about our homes being such a place of formation for our children. 

During the recent campaign that we initiated through a You Tube video on Children's corner at home during the COVID time, https://youtu.be/1eONrsUbwkA, we raised a plea with parents to create a corner in every home for children for them to develop a sense fo belonging. 

What is a home for children !

A home is the first experience they encounter in their earthly journey. They having been used to the cocoon of a uterus, arrives with a longing for a full and abundant life! 

All  children are endowed with the prospect of entering childhood and  adulthood to become who they can be, if a home becomes formative and liberating. Let me share three functions of  a home:

1. Relationships.  

When children are immersed in an ambience of unconditional love and supported to live their lives, exploring the environment where they receive attention and affirmation, they have an experience of wanting to relate to others. When they feel enveloped in a setting of warmth, they usually gravitate towards wanting to be part of others. It is when they feel just accommodated, they drift towards wanting to have more to do with watching TV or Mobile phone. 

All adults have to be deliberately tuned towards children at home as they are the ones for whom a home exists. So making every opportunity to make children at the centre of our thoughts, responses and plans should take precedence if we as parents want to be formative in our orientation towards our children. The more we are with our children, the more we create them to become what is beyond our expectations or prescriptions. Children are like birds who are with us for a while and then to leave our home like birds from a nest. Till they are with us, they need nurture to make them become a unique person. 

2. Opportunities

All children need opportunities to expand their interests and abilities. An enabling environment is one, when a child is asked of his or her needs and provided for. A girl who requested for a toy piano at three years, recently completed her eight grade piano examination from the Royal College of Music, London. Most child express their aspirations quietly and in hushed tone. They are denied the prospect of tracking their instinct. To be supportive of children would mean being responsive to their instincts and interests. 

Home is a place where adults normally dominate and arbitrate with children.  Adults look for several reasons to deny children of what they seek after. Instead of parents seeking after children to make their home environment richer by allowing children to express themselves, we deny them their right to be heard. When we ask a child about what he or she would like to do on a holiday or week end, we are offering the child to think and suggest an interest he or she would want to explore. As adults we can crowd our time with our interests that we marginalise the needs or interest for children. I remember that our two children marked on the calendar that the week-ends belonged to them. As adults we could have anything of ourselves only with their permission. 

3. Encouragements

Children thrive on encouragement and appreciation. I asked a family to make a record of all the 'no' they say to their two children and the occasions of words of appreciation during a five day period. They listed 140 'no' or angry words or scoldings and just thirteen times  of complements towards one child during the five days. When the parents came with this report they were tearful and confessed that they are driven by what they experienced during their childhood.

It is not our scolding or punishment or reprimands which would help in the formation of our children but our love, affection, endearment and upbuilding. We do this by having conversations with our children and not just instructions or demands of all sorts. The conversation times are to hear and not so much to tell. We hear and feel the emotion when a child is narrational. 

A 14 year old child who complained of choking while eating food, had a mountain of emotion over the loss of his father two weeks ago, following the COVID pneumonia. He saw his father choke for breath before he was transferred to the hospital. He lives with the fear of that nasty and horrible sight. After a long conversation when we made him eat chocolate bars, he did not feel the choking. He came back after lunch with no choking expereince. His emotional overload choked him.

Our children live with enormous experiences and with emotional overload. 

Parents are their listeners. From being advisors to our children, let us begin by being intent listeners to our children. 

A home is a place for Children. Adults live as stewards of children. We are parents because we are given the role of being formatters of our children.

Make home a safe and cheerful place for children to grow up!

I send this bunch of flowers from our garden to all parents, who want to move closer to their children to give them a larger space in their lives and home. 

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)