Parenting skills: A positive way

Prof (Dr) Karuna Hazarika

(The writer is Principal-cum-Chief Superintendent, Tezpur Medical College, Tezpur. He can be reached at drkaruna97@gmail.com)

Today, parents are confused about what to do with their wards. Now, schools are going to be closed due to summer vacation and parents will be busy selecting various opportunities and scope to keep their children busy in extracurricular and academic activities. Now, we are all second-generation parents and are concerned for our children who also deserve proper guidance. We as parents want to help our children to bring the best out of the potential they possess. But it is a difficult task for the parents to select from the various tips and is often confusing while selecting from different parenting experts, and sometimes contradictory too. In our childhood days, hardly we could get guidance and proper advice for selecting a career and other supervision to build up ourselves in society. It was almost self-learning in most families, apart from little help from the teachers. 'Parenting skill means a parent's competencies in providing physical care, protection, supervision and psychological support appropriate to a child's age and stage of development.' The skills include those skills that are necessary to meet the needs of the person's child. So, the parenting skill should include instruction and guidance in the developing stages of the children for overall development i.e. intellectual, language, physical, academic, social development and constructive playing activities, as well. Parenting skills are for the development of both father and mother, including infants, and childhood development skills. Thus parenting skills mean a parent's competencies and child-parent relationship the influence various aspects of child development. Positive and optimal parenting skills have a positive impact on children's self-esteem, school performance and cognitive development and behaviour. These could be the parenting strength to raise their children who will be confident and successful afterwards. Here, we will be concentrating mostly, on parenting skills for school-going children only.

While looking into the present day's involvements of parents, sometimes it looks very aggressive and misguiding too. The mindsets of some parents are different and always try put pressure on their children as they cannot effort to lose any chance of getting the best out of them. This is a bad trend and is proved to be harmful to the children. The parents must look for the proper and overall development of children and simultaneously need to change their mindset also. Imagine the common questions usually asked by the mother mostly, to the children while they are back from school. What happened in the school? Have you taken your tiffin?

Is there any test? How much have you got? Is there anything in your record book? These are the common questions for school-going children in most families. To understand the child's mind, the mindset of parents needs to be changed. Your questions put a strong impact on the developing mind. So, the pattern of questions needs to be changed to guide them, to build a strong, helpful, and social mind that will lead to a complete and successful adult in future. There is a suggestion from researchers of child psychology, never compare a child with others about their performance and activities. All children are different and unique. They have their capabilities and own world of imagination. This has to be evaluated and guided accordingly. If you repeat a similar negative question, definitely it will put an impact on their mind and will negatively guide them. Rather, if you discuss positive ways instead, like this time you have done a little better than earlier performance. Keep it up etc. Instead of scolding the children for not taking Tiffin at school try to ask them to share Tiffin with their friends, so that they can learn what share is. Ask them to help each other, so that a social mindset develops from the school days and learn what help is and thereby develop compassion. Ask them what they have learnt from others in the school and appreciate them, so that they can try to see good things in others, and try to develop them, accordingly.

Another important aspect of parenting skills is the career guidance of children. Most of the time, we want to see ourselves in them in a way that we could not do or try to fulfil our dreams through them. We try to provide the best possible school, best possible tuition, best possible gadgets, and facilities to develop their career according to our choice. As all the best facilities are provided to the children, they must listen to their parents and must fulfil their dream through careers. This is taken for granted. But we never ask them what they want to be in future? This needs to be corrected. Our perspective has to be changed. We have to see our children through their perspective and observe them as well. There are hundreds of career opportunities now in comparison to earlier days when only a handful of career scopes were available. Now, even the parallel courses of the curriculum can give a good scope of a career as well. There are plenty of career opportunities other than a regular course, starting from sports, fine arts, music, photography, media; youtube, dealing events, management, marketing, communication, E-com and whatnot. Even as parents we may not be aware of the scope of careers available today. It is a vast world with no boundaries and an era of communication and technology. Now as a career, the sky is the limit and is wide open too, needs to evaluate only. So, parents need to help and guide them with good facilities, a good teacher and an environment that will provide an ecosystem for selecting their career.

Parenting skills do not mean only providing their requirements. Both parents must give sufficient time to their children and need to discuss their day-to-day activities and share amongst themselves with proper attention. This helps the children acquire their way of developing their listening and communication skills. While discussing one should focus that they should not criticize others or discuss bad things and about their bad days in front of the children. There are different types of parents. Some may be very strict and always focus on pushing, maybe of loved one and focused but neither discipline nor pushing, maybe uninvolved one who neither focus nor love their children and fulfil their needs only, and the other one are smart or concerned parents who give their sufficient time, focus their goal and strict simultaneously, push to achieve goals, and equally love their children. This is the outcome of the research on parenting for quite some time. A smart or concerned parent is the ideal one who not only cares for their children, but also guides them with proper discipline, goal, love, and focuses as well. These children of smart parents will achieve their goals and will be happy, and independent, develop self-esteem, have good social skills and relationships and, have good mental health too. In return, these children definitely will take care of their parents in their old age.

Parenting is a skill that needs to develop well for the betterment of children to grow and develop to be a good socially active and able citizens in future. Parents need to be proactive and need not react whenever there is something wrong with children. Simultaneously, the parents need to be careful about their reactions too. Children observe their activities all along and try to follow them in real life. But they have to teach their children about the adaptability and flexibility of any situation which is very important in the present-day context. Skilled parenting will bring good to the children and will lead them to a successful life and an ideal good citizen which is the need of the hour. (This is an excerpt of the speech on the foundation day of a school).