If we go through the human history of developments, we can easily conclude that there has hardly been any change when it comes to the natural process of producing kids. The major and unimaginable change has been in the process of upbringing children. This is the real issue/challenge we need to talk about.

Olden days perhaps as much natural a child birth was, the upbringing was also considered equally natural. No special skills or approaches were needed or even considered needed when it came to parenting. A father had a very clearly defined role and status and so was the case with mother and grand-parents. The children also had their mindset clear about what parents mean to them and to a large extent their own role as children in family.

When it comes to Machines we can write a programme and if we are not happy with the performance of the machine we can with little efforts change and rewrite the programme and do it till we are happy with the performance of the machine. When it comes to children, it’s always easy to write a good programme (thoughts) in the beginning itself rather than re-writing a new programme (thoughts) after the child is found suffering due to a badly written earlier programme. My very personal experience with thousands of people whom I have trained/counselled/coached, has been a journey of eye opening learnings and is still continuing.

Numerous parents are coming to me with various challenges they face and in this section I would like to highlight following challenges highlighted by them:

  • Our child is busy full time with Mobile or is watching too much TV or spends long and late hours chatting with friends and so on and so forth...
  • Our child has become rude in behaviour, especially when we stop him/her in doing certain activities which we know are injurious to him/her in long run.
  • We are really at loss to understand how to communicate with our children as they seem to be totally not interested in making relationship with us etc.

Life has changed a lot since the introduction of electronic gadgets as a major communication media. We have become so immersed in living with these Gadgets that we are unable to differentiate between the Real World and the Virtual World. Due to all this especially in many children, they are unable to understand the need to work with a mission in life.

We are heavily getting busy connecting up with so many people through these gadgets, who actually have made very less/insignificant contributions in our personal & family life. At the same time we are not realizing that we are rapidly drifting away from our own family members who actually matter the most in every sense to us. The fact will always remain that it is actually our own close family members, who ultimately will decide and define the happiness in our life journey.

Who is to be blamed? The answer although is very hurting, but the reality is that, the parents are the major contributors of difficulties in many ways in child’s life. Many of these electronic gadgets are actually creating unseen “Brain Blocks” in children. Children never buy these gadgets…it’s always a thoughtless gift given to children by parents and many times pre-matured gift too as they are not prepared to handle this with control.

While we understand that everything has some positive or negative impact, but when it comes to children we must understand that “Human Brain is naturally designed to avoid pain and seek pleasure”. Children will naturally go towards pleasure seeking activities without realizing the long term negative consequences of their learnt habits.

Therefore, when we handover these Gadgets to children we must take care of following:

  • To ensure that children are not addicted and remain disciplined, parents must first show the way themselves. Many parents are themselves addicted. They don’t realize that they need to spend very powerful and purposeful time with children in cultivating relationships.
  • Parents must train children to use God gifted “Power of Choices” with own will power so that they remain the “BOSS” of the Gadgets. One way can be that the parents remain BOSS & LEADERS, and thus teach what it means to be the Boss.
  • If we closely look, then we will understand that the “Generation Gap” was always created by the “Older Generation”. Therefore the Generation Gap can only be reduced by senior members of family by accepting the need to change and unlearning their old ways of managing children and learning new methods to nurture energetic and positive children. Today also powerful parents can be seen doing their job diligently.
  • Children always initially crave for love and attention from Parents but when they are persistently ignored (most of the times unknowingly) they gradually find themselves attracted to friends and electronic gadgets. We although can’t blame parents for this as they are sucked by real life issues. A deliberate balancing act has to be put in place by parents.
  • It is paramount to understand that parents should never lose the physical touch and feel of their children (irrespective of their age). I have seen that in the families where physical touch is fully present between family members, the bonding in the family is very natural and great. When parents stop touching their children, then only outsiders start touching their children. When parents touch, they know why they are touching, but when outsiders touch their children, then parents really have no clue as who is touching and with what motives they are touching their children. Children by their nature love touch so get close to these people without knowing their motives. Most of the times it is too late when the realization of reality dawns upon on parents with pains and frustrations.
  • After coming from work parents try to unwind themselves by watching TV or being on the Social Networking Sites. This is the beginning of going away from loved ones. Our brain can be trained to enjoy and relax while we spend time with spouse, children and other family members. Powerful parents are doing it consciously. Work stress can’t be the excuse to get into negative activities. Finally it has been proved that Family Stress is much more damaging and killing than Work Stress.
  • Finally, if the damage has already been done i.e. the child has developed noticeable behavioural or performance issues, then “Professional help must be taken without further delay”. This will not only prove to be life changing but will also be life-saving.

There is an URGENT need to understand our more and more demanding role as elders and do our best in upbringing children. If we follow some of these basics then I am sure these DEAD Electronic Gadgets and Negative People around can’t adversely impact our children and bring pain/unhappiness in our family life. I salute those parents who are proving in current times also that effective parenting is possible and doing a great job. It’s worth to learn skills of parenting and enjoy upbringing children.

These are only generic tips and views. Each case has to be seen in its entirety/totality and suitable remedial actions must be taken. I am thankful to God as I am able to make lasting changes in lives of so many children and their families.