On Child Perfectionism and Freedom Boundaries…

I had the privilege of being invited to attend a seminar hosted by Maya Menon through her NGO initiative named The Teacher Foundation on ‘Schools Today at a Cultural Crossroads’. The panel consisted of a wonderful mix of four people: a Principal of a well established school, a Parent, an Ex-Student and a lady Psychiatrist. The audience was a large number of teaching faculties from different schools based in Bangalore and Mumbai.

The evening spanned into a wondrous and powerful exchange of views and experiences on how children from different cultures in schools must be handled in today’s modern era of virtual information and exposures: good, bad and ugly. This was certainly a great initiative Maya took and many of the topics covered were real eye-openers.

However, the reason why I am drawn towards writing about this seminar are two very critical points covered which I am personally and emotionally very involved with and often talk about it in my own workshops for parents, students and the teaching faculty: (a) Child Perfection and (b) what should be the freedom curbs or ‘boundaries’ that one needs to create around a child during their adolescent years. While I was able to speak on the first topic very briefly, which was well accepted by the panel and the audience, I was unable to express myself on the second one due to a shortage of time. Hence this blog…  

On Child Perfection: I have always firmly believed that the very words ‘perfect’ and ‘perfection’ should not only be wiped out of the English Dictionary but also in the minds of all parents and teachers! I grew up in one of India’s oldest boarding schools and was continuously made to think that only ‘Practice would make me Perfect’! What a terrible anomaly of a statement!! In my view, ‘Practice can never make perfect’. Practice can only make IMPROVEMENT! And why be perfect?! Because when children are literally grilled to think that they must be ‘perfect’, they lose the very sense of their own being and live within a box with no other choice than to become perfect. But when children are made to think they must ‘practice to improve’ is when we help them to think out of a box and think innovatively. This very statement of ‘practicing to improve’ removes the shackles of fear in their pursuit to be ‘perfect’ exclusively desired by their peers. As a father of two wonderful daughters, I never spoke about perfection. Instead I always helped them to innovatively and continuously improve on whatever they were passionately pursuing either in their studies, extra-curricular activities or at home. And that’s one of the reasons why, as grown up girls, they are just amazing in whatever they do!

On Freedom Curbs or ‘Boundaries’: Most parents tend to create ‘boundaries’ to how much freedom a child must enjoy based on their own childhood experiences misused by they themselves as children just as their parents, grand-parents and great grand-parents did. Most teachers tend to create freedom ‘boundaries’ just because it is the ‘dictate’ of the Principal, caught up in a system that may not exist even in his own home, or for the reputation of the school. Ultimately the child suffers and becomes a clone of his or her parent when they have children of their own! Children don’t need their freedoms to be curbed. When you curb their freedom you become the aggressor. But when you flow with them accepting whatever they do, wrong or right, you become their Mentor, Friend, Guide and Leader. They willfully begin to respect what you say and want them to believe.

A father, who shared a very close bond and relationship with his children, once stumbled upon his young teenage daughter’s open laptop and discovered that she had begun to surf porn sites on the internet. For a moment he was taken aback but then burst out laughing. He laughed for two reasons. The first one was that this discovery made him realize that his daughter was no more the young little child he always imagined her to be and the second one was that she wasn't ‘gay’ because the porn sites were ‘straight’ ones!

Over the weekend when he could be alone with her, he told her that he knew she was viewing porn on the internet and had absolutely no issues about it and he really meant it. His daughter was initially surprised on hearing this revelation and then couldn't help feeling embarrassed. But he continued telling her that when he was her age he had also seen a couple of ‘blue’ films with his friends and viewed a host of porn magazines. But soon he asked himself whether all this was worth feeding his mind with or creating a sledgehammering mind fed with information that could make him stand out of the herd and realize every dream he had for the future. He said he chose the latter one and that’s probably the reason why he got to what he was today.

Over the years, his daughter passed out of her college with flying colors, completed her Masters and began chasing her dreams turning them, one by one, into astounding realities! Quite frankly, he still doesn't give a damn whether his daughter watches porn on the internet or not!!

And that’s all about great parenting J

Nurses, Interns and a pot-pourie of patients.

I was admitted in a hospital, for the first time in my life, a few weeks back due to an infection of the lungs promptly after the Doc saw the xray. I really didn't have an idea what to expect except just an 'imprisonment' for a week or so! Being an avid reader, I called up my local bookseller and ordered a few books to keep me company.

I was admitted during the late evening so the first night went off quite uneventful with a nurse doing her regulars with a thermometer and a BP machine and then 'tubing' me up with a drip bottle suspended from a stand and administering me a 'night rest' tablet which promptly 'rested' me off for the entire night. It were the following days and nights that I was exposed to one of the most wondrous people on earth: Nurses and Interns.

Being a speaker and educationist, especially on Leadership, I have a natural tendency to observe deeply almost anyone and anything around me that could possibly stand out as an example of exemplary leadership. And here, in the premises of a hospital I could observe so much that Nurses and Interns are continuously exposed to on a moment to moment basis and their amazing reactions! And I very specially refer to the Nurses and Interns simply because their exposure to their surroundings are more continuous in nature than that of a Doctor. Also, they are much younger and less experienced with minds that are far more absorbent of the affects of their surroundings than the matured Doctors.

Over the the week I noticed that within a hospital can only exist a chaos of emotions emanating from relatives, friends and acquaintances of a host of patients that enter and leave its portals - alive or dead, quite literally speaking. It is so difficult for the average human being who may have never frequented a hospital to imagine that there is always a steady flow of patients being admitted and not all of them in a condition you could bear to see. Grotesquely butchered people - probably the result of a street fight, profusely bleeding patients - an aftermath of an accident, pregnant women screaming and wrenching, patients suffering from heart attacks, strokes, ruptured veins and bleeding uncontrollably and whatever have you!

And midst all this are the nurses and interns. Deftly handling patients after the Doctor has done with them. Soothing their emotions. Building up strength in each one of them to face their physical adversities. Helping them to bear the pain of an amputated limb. Holding their hands and counselling them even after a child was still born. Offering their shoulders to parents who had lost their son in an accident. Hugging children who had just lost their mother. Pandering to rude an demanding patients with a smile of assurance.

And the list of observations that I made seemed absolutely endless!

Often, while I lay in my hospital bed at night I would wonder, how do these marvelous young professionals handle the everyday stress of life beyond their work? At home? On the streets? With some of their 'not so warm' relatives, neighbors or whoever? How do they think sanely with the influence of their daily work exposures embedded in their 'sub-conscious' minds? What kind of a human being would they be beyond and outside the exit of their place of work?

I spent much time speaking to each one of them and realized that they, unitedly, harbored so much of a desire to naturally protect and recreate each patient's life into a blissful existence...once again!

Very truly...an amazing display of self-actualized leadership!!! 

An Article that I wrote for a school magazine...

At the feet of my Elders

‘Stand up, be strong and be bold. Because you and only You are the Creator of your own Destiny!’ – Swamy Vivekanand.

My youth was almost half a decade ago wherein, unlike today, information exposure was limited to either, the daily newspapers, radio or books in a library. However, within the limitations of this prosaic era was an unlimited opportunity to learn life and the very meaning of existence. This opportunity offered itself, most infinitely, at the very feet of our elders. It was an absolutely non-comparable offering of knowledge that was borne out of the learnings of the several mistakes they had made during their lifetime. A knowledge whose contents would require millions of pages to capture in written form. And a knowledge that adequately groomed the very principles of our inner thinking as young students seeking a foundation for a better future as adults.

Every morning we have three choices to make when we wake up: to choose between Love or Fear, to choose between Faith or Hope and to choose between Work or Procrastination.

Firstly, as a young student, I would choose Love over Fear. Because Love is universal and boundless while Fear is limited, caught up tight in unbreakable capsules of needless negative emotions. Love has no inhibitions. Love does not keep you in a paradigm that makes you either judgmental or critical. Love gives you the power of acceptance. It makes you forgiving and understanding of the fact that no matter who we are, we are the children of God and that each one of us, albeit our limitations, have our own halos of shining talent and naturalness. Love attracts love. And all those who know how to love, from deep within their hearts, will always remain blessed.

Secondly, I would choose Faith over Hope. Hope makes you walk through the fire whereas Faith makes you jump over it. Hope stems from fears – fears of the unknown and therefore, will what we desire ever happen or not?!. But Faith stems from belief embedded deep inside you. A belief that you have the Power and the Greatness within your very Soul to achieve anything you can dream of. So when you choose Faith, you choose a clearly defined existence. An existence in a world in which you bring to reality every dream you can dream.

And finally, as a young student, I would choose Work over Procrastination. Procrastination is merely postponing what you have to do simply borne out of lethargy. But strength to Work is the biggest gift of God that any of us can receive. I would work hard on my studies, my sports and games, my cultural assignments and all the talents that I was born with. Because, for me, Work was Worship. Work made me a stronger human being because it turned my weaknesses into strength. It made me better than the rest and hence, more successful in life.

Every morning, when you wake up, if you could always make the right choices by listening to your heart, you will realize that no matter how cold and harsh the winters may become in your life, there will always be an invincible summer within you!

Anand K Nair

Speaker. Entrepreneur. Educationist.

AGNI Leadership Centre