The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Learning the ropes of effective parenting

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 08, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Learning the ropes of effective parenting

Ratnesh Mathur feels that proper communication should be developed between the child and the parent early on. He tells K. Satyamurty that parents should change their attitude instead of trying to change the child.

If anyone still takes Maria Montessori's adage "follow the child" seriously, it must be Ratnesh Mathur of GenieKids Learning Resource.

Talking during a break at a workshop on parenting for corporate employees, he shared his views on child development, which he feels is more important than acquiring knowledge.

"A mother of a three-year-old child emailed me saying her son has an encyclopaedic memory. How does it help when you can easily refer to an online encyclopaedia or any number of websites? The child's mind should be used for other things," Mr. Mathur said.

More than acquiring knowledge, it is important to understand how to use that knowledge.

Learning from experience

"You need to help the child develop self-confidence, self-esteem, analytical and problem solving skills. It all has to come from within themselves," he said. For instance, when two kids are fighting, the adult need not pull them apart. The child should be let to experience anger.

Children will later learn to deal with that anger and help each other instead of fighting, Mr. Mathur opined.

"A child can learn from an early age about being sensitive to others and even cope with failure. The child can also learn to help other children," he said.

He narrated an incident when a child was crying on his first day in nursery school.

The other children were asked to help him stop crying. Next day, when another new girl came weeping to school, this boy was the first to go and console her, he said. Good parenting is what makes good children.

Attitude change

"Instead of trying to change a child, let the parents change their own attitudes," he said.

If a child is running around and making too much noise, the parent should not shout and order the child to keep quiet.

The parent should instead treat the child as an equal and ask it to play without disturbing others, he added.

According to many child psychologists, discipline comes out of complete freedom, Mr. Mathur said.

Parents, who are authoritarian with a six-year-old child and do not bother to explain things, may have to deal with a difficult teenager after the child grows older.

Mutual respect

Proper communication between the child and parent should be developed early on and both need to learn to respect each other.

"I studied engineering and then went on to IIM-Lucknow to do MBA. I spent eight years in an advertising firm in Bangalore, before I realised it I wanted to work with children," he recalled.

It all started with helping small groups of children and grew to waht it is today.

"Parental attitudes are changing, but there is still a long way to go.

"But the good thing is that parents are exposed to child upbringing ideas from outside. People are willing to learn and we have 100 articles on parenting on our website (www.geniekids.com) .

"There are many books and other readinf material that are available and the parents should use them," he said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka