The communicating presence !

 

A senior citizen on his morning walk and a teenager on his morning cycle ride !

Two contrasting scenes in life!

The teenager shall become a senior citizen. The senior citizen above, might have been cycling in his teenage years! 

The reversal of roles in life!

This thought gripped me on account of few events recently. What a child shall become is a vision which parents carry upon their heart and give themselves towards childhood formation. 

A teenager is at the threshold of becoming independent of his or her parents. The parents have time till the teenage years to stay close to their children even to be their confidants. What a teenage child grows up to be later in life is to a large extent influenced by how much children stayed intimate emotionally in their relationship with parents. 

It is for the parents to plan their involvement with their children from pre-school years to condition the growing process of their children. The cognitive, affective and moral formation of children takes place between toddler years and mid school years which is around ten years of age. If parenting involvement is consistent, cordial, and communicative, a child would normally find the parents as their role models. They become behaviourally and temperamentally formed by the parenting influence. 

The 'parenting presence' is more than just a physical presence. It is the communicating presence that matters, for which time spent with children  in an interactive way is the pathway!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)

The now and the later!

The visibility of the road ends as it turns. The visible sights are fascinating to look at. 

I have come across two groups of parents. The first, who make the childhood experiences of their children at home, pleasant and refreshing. The other group thinks a lot about the unknown future of their children and are engaged in planning, that they are less active to stay fully involved with their growing up children. 

A child is now present with us, whom we can influence to give him  insights and readiness to choose wisely, before he or she moves out of the orbit of our homes.  What he or she inherits from our intimate involvement during the early years of their formations would be the ground, on which he or she stands to choose the pathway in future. 

The 'now' of the child development practices is what  parents can focus on. What is ideal is to look for every opportunity to be proactively involved with a child till he or she reaches the teen age years. Parents will get sometimes marginalised from the active role of parents, once a child is a teenager. Even this would not happen, if the earlier years have been intimate with the children where 'friendship' was the ambience of relationship. 

Befriending a child starts from the toddler years of a child. It is good for parents to keep this as their ambition: let our children find us a their first line of contact for all conversations. This calls for creating openness and comfort for conversations. Do children see us as their well wishers or  as those who are nagging to correct them to conform!

The letting go in child development begins here. We can create the environment for the child to grow up loved and feel wanted. When that happens the response of the children would be wanting to reciprocate. 

The parenting role before the teenage years is to bathe a child in the language of love, affirmation and belonging! Then a child follows the good practices of the home!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)