A to Z Tips for Parents

A to Z Tips for Parents Teresa Aranha

PHILIPPINES

A to z tips for parents Š by Teresa Aranha Published and distributed by Paulines Publishing House Daughters of St. Paul 2650 F.B. Harrison Street 1300 Pasay City, Philippines E-mail: edpph@paulines.ph Website: www.paulines.ph Cover design by Desktype Asia Design Studio All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.

1st printing 2013 ISBN 978-971-590-732-3

at the service of the Gospel and culture

Dedication To my parents: my father, Dr. Frank Mascarenhas, who taught me how to be a genuine human being, leading by his excellent moral example and always living up to Cardinal Newman’s definition of a gentleman as “one who never inflicts pain on another.”

And my mother, Lucy Mascarenhas nee Pais, who took infinite pains to see that all her children had the fullest of educations—spiritual, moral, physical and mental; who never spared any effort to teach us and involve us in activities that would build up our knowledge and morals; who sacrificed much and suffered in many ways in order to give her children the best, and who never stopped telling us stories illustrating the vices and virtues that could make or break a person, definitely instilling in us the difference between wrong and right; and to both of them, for creating a home where each of us children was a prince or a princess, worthy and capable of great things. Though the money was not much, the love overflowed from our home to others. Everyone, including strangers, was welcome and thus, our social development took place.

I am thankful to my mother, above all, for showing me the prime place I should give God in my life. Without which, I would have floundered in the many difficult and challenging circumstances in which I have found myself.

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Contents Acceptance Authoritarian vs. Authoritative Belief in Your Child Belief and Trust in God Collaboration Connecting Dreams Discipline Empowerment Example Family Fathers Good Environment God Hard Work Health Integrity Joy Knowledge Love Listen Laughter Money Never-Say-Die Spirit

12 15 18 20 23 24 28 30 34 37 42 46 52 55 61 63 65 69 72 84 91 93 95 97

Outgoing Nature Positive Thinking Peer Pressure Quality Time Reality Relationships Simple Living, High Thinking Trust Truthfulness Time Understanding United Front Vision Wonder Work Words X-tra Mile Yardstick Zest Zenith Words to Ponder A ‘Must-Read’ for Every Parent

101 104 108 110 115 118 123 127 127 128 133 135 137 141 143 144 151 155 159 160 164 173

Preface A book I wrote several years ago with my high school students in mind, A to Z Tips for Teens, turned out to be very popular. I had kept it short and snappy, having learnt by then that the attention span of youngsters is limited.

Parenting should come naturally, but unfortunately, we are bombarded with so much information and advice in today’s media-dominated world, that very often we lose our way. Gone are the days of enormous joint families where all the cousins were treated as one, where grandparents played a great formative role in the lives of youngsters, and where non-working mothers could spend time cuddling their children.

There’s no need to describe today’s changed scenario.

The nuclear family has become the norm, and in tiny matchbox flats, parents struggle to give their children the best they can. But how are all their sacrifices going to help the child?

A strange fact that struck me the moment I had my first baby was that for every profession or career in the world there is a training course in place, but for this greatest of challenges and careers, bringing up a balanced, successful human being, there’s hardly any advice or guidance. (Dr. Spock may please excuse this studied judgment!) We, as parents, have to play it by A-Z Tips for Parents

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ear and believe me, that ear needs to be very sharp if we are to do a good job. (Every child is different and has different needs and one person’s experiences are rarely of help to another.) To cater to these differing personalities and their needs is a difficult enterprise.

The question I would pose to parents is: Are you bringing up your child with a selfish narrow outlook, where he or she think in terms of I/me/myself or are you going to give to the world a great thinker, a mover, a shaker, who will influence many lives for the better?

The latter can be done as will be seen from the lives of the great—from Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, who does not want to keep his wealth for his children and has given away the bulk of it, to Baba Amte1 who, in spite of belonging to a zamindar’s2 family, left all, to work in Shantivana amidst the despised of society, the lepers, or the great, Steve Waugh, who has not rested on his cricketing laurels but is deeply committed to the uplift of lepers in 1. “Dr. Murlidhar Devidas Amte (Dec. 26, 1914–Feb. 9, 2008), popularly known as Baba Amte, was an Indian social worker and social activist known particularly for his work for the rehabilitation and empowerment of poor people suffering from leprosy.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Amte (accessed March 8, 2013) 2. “A zamindar or zemindar was an aristocrat, typically hereditary, who held enormous tracts of land and held control over his peasants, from whom the zamindars reserved the right to collect tax (often for military purposes). Over time, they took princely and royal titles such as Maharaja (Great King), Raja (King), Nawab (Lord), Mirza (Prince), reddy (ruler), Chowdhury (Lord), and many others.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamindar (accessed March 8, 2013)

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Kolkata, or Mother Teresa, the icon of the charitable heart for so many.

As a mother of five and grandmother of six, as a teacher who has had thousands of children passing through her hands during nearly thirty years of teaching, and also as having to shoulder the responsibility for my eight younger siblings when my father died young and my mother was very ill, I dare to put down a few points.

My children have questioned nearly every belief and action of mine—luckily after they were grown up! And I feel I might have done a few things differently. At that time I can truthfully say I was trying to ‘do the right as God gave me to see the right’—to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln’s words in his immortal ‘Gettysburg Address.’

Today, my grandchildren open my eyes to yet more viewpoints—their own, and I am much more tolerant of their views. Their mothers, my daughters, are not!

Tolerance towards grandchildren is the prerogative of grandparents!

Today’s parents have a difficult job to do, instilling values while beating back the many insidious evils that surround their children in this modern world.

(In every incident that takes place in our lives, I firmly agree with Buddha that we should opt for the middle path—the path of moderation. We have to A-Z Tips for Parents

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train ourselves like the great yogis3 and thinkers to be proactive, not reactive.) With our limited vision, who are we to impose our will and our dreams on others?

“Live and let live” should be the motto. We cannot, maybe, rid ourselves of the mindset hammered into us by our own parents, but we live in a newer, brighter time. The future shines brightly for our kids, but there’s a dark side too, with suicides and murders and robberies committed by children from “good” homes.

With a little awareness and effort we can give our children the best in life—a feeling of self-worth and a feeling that every obstacle is put in their paths only to be conquered.

What follows are thoughts I have set down from time to time in these forty-four years of marriage and thirty years of teaching and counseling. If even one point is of help to a parent, I will feel I have achieved something indeed. Many of the points may overlap, but that’s common in writing about bringing up a human being or even in the actual process of doing so—the boundaries all melt into one another.

On the next page is a poem that influenced me tremendously. I have used it while counseling so many parents who thought they had problem children. I had to turn the mirror around and show them that actually, 3. “A Yogi is a practitioner of Yoga. The word is also used to refer to ascetic practitioners of meditation in a number of South Asian religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi (accessed March 19, 2013)

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they were problem parents, unwilling to let go of their children, to let them dream, to follow their own star.

I also record my thanks to the authors of the many inspirational quotes and poems that I have assiduously collected over the years because of my deep interest in human endeavor and especially because I hoped they might help others when put together.

Teresa Aranha Mumbai

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Acceptance “I accept you from the hands of my God— You are God’s gift to me—a wonderful gift….”

–Anonymous These beautiful words of a popular hymn usually sung by spouses to each other should be the daily prayer and utterance of all parents, telling their child and God of their total acceptance of the child in their lives.

I Am the Child I am the child All the world waits for my coming; All the earth watches with interest to see What I shall become.

Civilization hangs in the balance, For what I am, the world of tomorrow will be.

I am the child I have come into your world about which I know nothing Why I came, I know not; How I came, I know not.

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I am curious, I am interested, I am the child.

You hold in your hand my destiny; You determine, largely, whether I shall succeed or fail.

Give me, I pray you, those things that make for happiness.

Train me, I beg you, that I may be a blessing to the world.

–Mamie Gene Cole Your children need you to accept them as they are, not as you want them to be. Discern those special individual traits in your children and praise them.

“My son comes home with an earring today, tomorrow with a tattoo and the day after, with his eyebrow pierced. What am I to make of this?” Shouting and forbidding will only make him rear back and defy you.

Can you talk it over? “What is the significance of all this? Could you explain to me?” Maybe you’ll get a reasoned answer, maybe not, but do not antagonize your teen.

I asked my grandchild in the United States who is using makeup at age thirteen, why she had suddenly started with eye shadow, etc. for school. She replied, “But, Grandma, I’ll stand out if I don’t do my eyes.”

And this, hardly six months after she left India, a A-Z Tips for Parents

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conservative environment, and joined a school in the United States! I remembered how my children were absolutely forbidden to use any make-up and in any case, they would not have argued—and ‘standing out’ or not, that argument would have brought a ton of wrathful comments on their heads.

How quickly the young conform to their peer groups, was my thought. Before Becky’s school bag is ready, her make-up bag has to be on her shoulder. She is so particular about it that she is one of the most admired students in the class! The rest of the girls in her class say their make-up bags are in shambles. To what things do the young give importance!

I speak from experience. Be cool. Get your teens’ viewpoint. If you give in on this maybe they won’t succumb to peer-pressure and start drinking or taking drugs. All we can do is hope and pray.

Accept Me I am I Do not change me, Condemn me, Or put me down.

Accept me for what I am.

No, you need not agree with me But accept me 14

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For what my total being is.

I have my faults, I have my guilts, But that’s who I am Perfect I’ll never be.

Allow me to be uninhibited, Do not pressure me into feeling What I do not feel.

Accept me when I’m flying high, And also when I’ve fallen low.

Do not put me down…nor make me feel Unhappy about being just me.

I am what I am And I like being what I am That’s me.

–Larry S. Chengges

Authoritarian vs.

Authoritative It is vital that our communication with our children is gentle but firm.

–Author

Since my children find me guilty of the first quality, I have introduced this topic. There’s a big difference between the two attitudes. The first one is A-Z Tips for Parents

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the stamping ground of dictators, while the second one is the attitude of leaders and counselors. The first attitude creates resentment and often, defiance, while the second one gradually makes the child realize who is in control—at least for the time-being—and also that the person with that attitude knows what he or she is talking about. The child also realizes that no game is being played, that rules have been laid down after much thought, that everyone in the home keeps them and that this benefits everyone in the end.

Authoritarian parents who give no chance to the child for interaction produce rebels and social misfits.

Authoritative parents teach their children that there is a framework within which everyone is to work and this produces secure, disciplined kids. Since my children fall into the latter category I can ask them through this book whether they have decided what kind of parent I truly was.

Often it is the tone of voice that makes the child’s back go up. So it is vital that our communication with our children is gentle but firm. Children love playing games and will try their luck in order to buck the rules, but gentle firmness on the part of the parent will soon teach them that rules laid down are to be kept. My son once told me, “If you didn’t sound so much like a public prosecutor, maybe you would get across to us 16

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better.” I do agree with him about my tone of voice, but there were reasons why it developed—bringing up four active younger brothers and wanting them to be ‘good’ as our Papa would have wanted them to be, when I was aged only seventeen, left its mark.

Taking away privileges once or twice will help to show that you are in earnest. Let your children learn the difference between correction and punishment— the former has positive connotations, while the latter has negative ones. They should learn to build up a clear precept of these two words. If they decide to look on every attempt to set them on the right path as punishment, then it is time for some heart-to-heart talk or serious counseling.

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