Children

Spiritual Parenting: The Fine Art Of Wise Parenting 
By Swami Sukhabodhananda 

Children are very creative. However when faced with failure, they might become dispirited. Good parenting can enable children to accept facts of life and persuade them to proceed proactively in a creative mode.

The challenge of life is in accepting the fact that 'life is not fair'. Once you accept this fact, a certain understanding is generated. This will enable you to accept whatever life gives you.

Life is unfair. One child is born physically challenged while another is born healthy. Only when we begin to accept life can we understand it. You are born in a poor family. Accept it. Use whatever life gives you. You will find that acceptance leads to creativity.


Teach the child to use whatever life has given. Give examples of creative people who have faced challenges. Helen Keller was left sightless and with impaired hearing after an illness when she was barely six years old. Yet, she gained fame as a great social worker.

Poet John Milton had lost his eyesight before he wrote his masterpiece, Paradise Lost .

Every moment is the best; live life with this attitude. Be in the present where there is a hidden message, a mystery, and a possibility. Accept them and allow the magic to flow. Acceptance is not resigning to what is, but allowing what is, so as to gain empowerment and guidance.

But simply accepting without creativity is resignation. Life should be a balance between creativity and acceptance. Every parent should see whether the child's balance of Shiva and Shakti, or male and female energy - creativity and acceptance - is there. Once there is balance, the energy field helps the child live wisely. He will use whatever life gives him rather than being used by life. This is the insight every parent should gift to his or her children.
 

Parents should motivate children to identify a powerful goal; to learn to be a winner both in the inner and outer sphere. The outer winner achieves success. The inner winner gains satisfaction. A child should learn to be successful; he also has to learn to be satisfied. Striking a balance between success and satisfaction is important.
 

"Success is getting what I like; satisfaction is liking what I get." Success does not equal satisfaction. Our desires should be sacred, not sensuous. Our desires should be two-fold: one pointing outward and the other, pointing inward. The outward desire should be to contribute to the world. The inward desire should be to learn from any given situation and grow.
 

But desire has no end. You may be successful, but if your mind is filled with desire, you can never be happy. Children, teenagers, even parents, make the mistake of thinking: "Success is the only vision in life." Good parenting should involve guiding the child to not just learn to get what he likes but also learn to like what he gets.

 
Our scriptures talk about pleasure and pain. Sukha prapti is acquisition of happiness and dukha nivritti is putting an end to unhappiness. If sukha (pleasure) and dukha (pain) are perceived wisely, temptations to smoke and drink, for instance, will be treated as pain. But, the mind treats it as pleasure - hence you indulge yourself.

 
You can train your mind and say it is pain. 'Not smoking' is pleasure. 'Why?' 'By not smoking' you will be healthy; you can live better and longer. The moment you represent it as prati paksha bhavana, you are reversing the whole thing, and then you will find that you have the skill to handle any temptation in life. Therefore, parents should teach children to use the techniques of pleasure and pain in an intelligent way.