The Art Of Parenting NaviMumbai

https://youtu.be/Kx4TEW9fQAg?si=l_65JqzOnCJqvs55

Essential Qualities for a Dharmic Life: Cultivating the Need for Dharma Watch this Video https://youtu.be/TDLLHeXAPFo?si=4vYQgUNfQNi32277 ...

Discover The Genius In Your Child 0-8 Years!

Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a “new world” so they organized a school. They had adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming. In fact, better than his instructor. But he made only passing grades in flying and was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming in order to practice running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running but had a nervous breakdown because of so much makeup work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down. He also developed a “charlie horse” from overexertion and then got a C in climbing and D in running.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree but insisted on using his own way to get there.

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel that could swim exceeding well and also run, climb, and fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian.

The prairie dogs stayed out of school and fought the tax levy because the administration would not add digging and burrowing to the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to a badger and later joined the groundhogs and gophers to start a successful private school.

Does this fable have a moral?

Note: This story was written when George Reavis was the Assistant Superintendent of the Cincinnati Public Schools back in the 1940s!

This is the story of each of our children going to school!!!

Excerpt from a book by OSHO - Rajneesh (Autobiography of a spiritually incorrect mystic)

The wise man wants you only to have insight into things so that you have your own light. But you don't want insight, you want clear-cut instructions. You don't want to see yourself, you want to be guided. You don't want to accept your responsibility towards yourself; you want to throw the whole responsibility on the shoulders of the master, on the shoulders of the wise man. Then you feel at ease. Now he is responsible; if something goes wrong, he is responsible. And everything is going to be wrong, because unless you take your responsibility nothing is ever going to be right.
Nobody can put you right except you yourself.

A real religious person is born the moment you accept your responsibility for yourself, the moment you say, “Whatsoever I am is my choice—not of the past but of the present. It is my choice of this moment, and if I want to change it I am absolutely free to change it. Nobody can hinder me—no social force, no state, no history, no economics, no unconscious, can hinder me. If I am determined to change it, I can change it.

The master simply teaches you to be a master of yourself - that is the true function of a master. He does not want you to depend on him. But the mind goes on playing these mischiefs. The mind wants you to depend. The mind is always in search of a father figure or a mother figure; you want somebody to hold your hand. You want somebody to guide, to lead.

The master can only indicate. He is a finger pointing to the moon. But the mind plays a mischief: it clings to the finger - you may even start sucking the finger.

Zen master, Nan Yin, used to say to his disciples, "Please don't bite my finger - look at the moon!"

FROM YOUR VERY CHILDHOOD YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT NOT TO BE responsible. You have been taught to depend. You have been taught to be responsible to your father, to your mother, to your family, to your motherland, to all kinds of nonsense. But you have not been told that you have to be responsible for yourself, that there is nobody who is going to take your responsibility. . . .

I teach you not to be responsible to anybody —the father, the mother, the country, the religion, the party line, don’t be responsible to anybody. You are not!

Just be responsible to yourself. Do whatsoever you feel like doing. If it is wrong, the punishment will immediately follow. If it is right, the reward will follow immediately, instantly; there is no other way. In this way you will start finding what is wrong, what is right, on your own. You will grow a new sensitivity— Indians call it the third eye. You will start seeing with a new vision, a new eye. Instantly you will know what is wrong, because in the past so many times you have done it and always suffered in consequence. You will know what is right, because whenever you did existence showered great blessings on you. Cause and effect are together, they are not separated by years and lives. . . .

This is what I mean by being responsible to yourself. There is no God on whom you can dump your responsibility, but you are always searching to dump on somebody, even on a poor man like me, who is continuously telling you that I am not responsible for anything, for anybody. Still, somehow, deep down you go on carrying the illusion that I must be joking. I am not joking. “He is our master," you must be thinking. “How can he say that he is not responsible?" But you don’t understand. Dumping your responsibility on me, you will remain re****ed, childish. You will never grow.

The only way to grow is to accept all the good, the bad, the joyful, the sorrowful. Everything that happens to you, you are responsible for. That gives you great freedom.

If I am responsible for something, then the key to your actions is in my hands. Then you are a slave to me. Then you are a puppet and the strings are in my hand. I say dance, you dance; I say stop, you stop. Of course, the puppet cannot be responsible for anything. The puppeteer, who is behind the screen, is always responsible. God is the great puppeteer.

The moment I say there is no puppeteer, no God, no saint, it is all rubbish, I am trying to give you total freedom. I am making you absolutely responsible for everything that happens to you or does not happen. Rejoice in this freedom. Rejoice in this great understanding that you are responsible for everything in your life. This will make you what I call an individual. And to become an individual is to know all that is worth knowing, is to experience all that is worth experiencing. To be an individual is to be liberated, is to be enlightened.

Top Ten Mistakes in

"Obviously I believe that the school system is still stuck with many beliefs. Here are Roger Schank's ten favorites, with our comments.

Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing.
There really is no learning without doing. There is the appearance of learning without doing when we ask children to memorize stuff. But adults know that they learn best on the job, from experience, by trying things out.
Children learn best that way, too. If there is nothing to actually do in a subject area we want to teach children it may be the case that there really isn't anything that children ought to learn in that subject area.
Our Thought: One example is how most of us do not know the rules of grammar, yet get it mostly right.

Mistake #2:Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role.
Assessment is not the job of the schools. Products ought to be assessed by the buyer of those products, not the producer of those products. Let the schools do the best job they can and then let the buyer beware. Schools must concentrate on learning and teaching, not testing and comparing.

Our Thought: If at all, we (educators) should assess ourselves - how open, flexible and responsive is our teaching?

Mistake #3: Schools believe they have an obligation to create standard curricula.
Why should everyone know the same stuff? What a dull world it would be if everyone knew only the same material. Let children choose where they want to go, and with proper guidance they will choose well and create an alive and diverse society.

Our Thought: In spite of the system trying, most of us haven't learned a lot of things. How many of us can draw or sing better than a 2nd
grader?

Mistake #4: Teachers believe they ought to tell students what they think it is important to know.
There isn't all that much that it is important to know. There is a lot that it is important to know how to do, however. Teachers should help students figure
out how to do stuff the students actually want to do.

Our Thoughts: We need a faster processor or a bigger memory disk?

Mistake #5: Schools believe instruction can be independent of motivation for actual use.
We really have to get over the idea that some stuff is just worth knowing even if you never do anything with it. Human memories happily erase stuff that has no purpose, so why try to fill up children's heads with such stuff? Concentrate on figuring out why someone would ever want to know something before you teach it, and teach the reason, in a way that can be believed, at the same time.

Our Thought: We say, "Show the children WHY and then let them figure out HOW - and you will be amazed at their ingenuity.

Mistake #6:Schools believe studying is an important part of learning.
The practice is an important part of learning, not studying. Studying is a complete waste of time. No one ever remembers the stuff they cram into their heads the
night before the exam, so why do it? Practice, on the other hand, makes perfect. But, you have to be practicing a skill that you actually want to know how to
perform.

Our Thought: Study is the pursuit of knowledge, Learning is the acquisition of ability. You choose.

Mistake #7: Schools believe that grading according to the age group is an intrinsic part of the organization of a school.
This is just a historical accident and it's a terrible idea. Age-grouped grades are one of the principal sources of terror for children in school because they are always feeling they are not as good as someone else or better than someone else, and so on. Such comparisons and other social problems caused by age-similar grades cause many a child to have terrible confidence problems. Allowing students to help those who are younger, on the other hand, works well for both parties.

Our Thought: Why first teach children to be individuals in schools, then when they grow up - spend millions on training them to be team players?

Mistake #8:Schools believe children will accomplish things only by having grades to strive for.
Grades serve as motivation for some children, but not for all. Some children get very frustrated by the arbitrary use of power represented by grades and simply give up.

Our Thought: It’s amazing when you actually let children grade themselves and chart (through self-assessment) their progress over time.

Mistake #9: Schools believe discipline is an inherent part of learning.
Old people especially believe this, probably because schools were seriously rigid and uptight in their day. The threat of a ruler across the hand makes children anxious and quiet. It does not make them learn. It makes them afraid to fail, which is a different thing altogether.

Our Thought: It’s not so important to be disciplined to learn, but it’s important to learn to be disciplined - self-disciplined.

Mistake #10: Schools believe students have a basic interest in learning whatever it is schools decide to teach to them. What kid would choose learning mathematics over learning about animals, trucks, sports, or whatever? Is there one? Good. Then, teach him mathematics. Leave the other children alone.

Our Thought: The children in our classroom are more important than the subject matter we teach!

This list does not detail all that is wrong with school. It strives to make you aware and then discuss, persuade and even influence school and its authorities to change the way they educate. This is clear PTA meeting stuff. But more importantly, perhaps first we need to question our own beliefs

By Ratnesh & Aditi Mathur
Co-founders of which is an for learners of all ages: Open to all kinds of interests, abilities, styles and content areas. Learning by doing what one wants, how one wants, and self-reflection. Community to co-live, co-learn and co-support each other. Aarohi's Campus is in a village near Hosur in Tamil Nadu (55km fm Bangalore).

Once I understood that babies are whole people ready to be treated with respect — that they in fact need and deserve this message from the time they are born — there was no turning back. Inspired by this vital new knowledge and awareness, I couldn’t help wishing the rest of the world would catch up. But I’m still waiting while most parents are doing the things I once did or might have done, like:

1. Making things disappear: which is a great way to teach babies that the world is even more mysterious and incomprehensible than they’d thought. Seriously, what’s the point of even trying to figure this stuff out?

2. Scooping babies up and swooping them away from unwanted activities: which makes babies feel powerless because life is something that happens to them. They learn that they may be interrupted at any time, so why bother getting involved in any learning activity? (And for babies, everything is a learning activity).

3. Slapping or “flicking” hands or wrists or spanking bottoms: which causes babies to fear, or at best lose trust in their parents, caregivers, and the universe as a whole, because when they are happily exploring as they should, they are suddenly interrupted by discomfort inflicted upon them by the people they need to trust most.

4. Talking to them caveman style or in third person, i.e., “Not for Susie, no hands”: which is confusing, demeaning and makes babies feel like we think they are mindless ninnies, because they’ve been listening to every word we’ve ever uttered and are well aware that we don’t talk to anyone else that way.

No hands? What do you think “no hands” means to a baby? That even confuses me.

5. Calling out their names and then directing their attention to something else (distraction): which discourages awareness, attentiveness and an honest connection with us, teaches children nothing about rules, expectations or boundaries, their environment, or anything except that we are deceptive, far more powerful than they are (which they already knew) and that they should look where we want them to look.

6. Shouting NOOOOO: which is a great way to startle/disturb/excite babies so that they feel compelled to continuously repeat the unwanted action in order to continue this thrilling game or figure out what all the fuss is about.

And yet our best responses are so simple and logical that they will become second nature almost immediately. Let’s say our baby is approaching an unprotected electrical socket:

a. Stay calm – walk or stride rather than run and scream

b. Acknowledge matter-of-factly: “I see you are interested in the socket”

c. Give a boundary: “I’m going to cover it with my hand”

d. Give a brief, respectful explanation: “This isn’t safe for you to touch”

e. Wait patiently for your child to accept the boundary or lose interest while holding the boundary

f. If your child persists (most of the time if you are calm, she won’t), continue to acknowledge: “you really wanted to check that out, but it isn’t safe, so my hand covers it. You’re trying to move my hand, but I’m going to keep it here and keep you safe.” If she cries, you might say, “You didn’t like that. Do you want me to pick you up?” Chances are she is tired or hungry along with wanting to be held.

When we employ these respectful practices our children will:

Learn our language and about their world
Be encouraged to continue being curious explorers and active, engaged learners.
Feel respected and connected to us.
And we will discover how much easier, more effective, rewarding and liberating parenting is when we simply get real with our babies.

My Child.

My child isn't my easel to paint,

Nor my diamond to polish!

My child isn't my trophy to flaunt,

Nor my dummy to taunt!

My child isn't my badge or my honour,

Nor my respect that he/she must protect!

My child isn't an idea or a fantasy,

Nor my reflection or legacy!

My child isn't my puppet or my project,

Nor my pawn or my cadet!

My child is here to fumble & stumble

To get in & out of trouble!

My child is here to try,

To fall & to cry!

My child is here to unravel the mysteries,

To educate oneself & rewrite histories!

My child is here to make his/her own choices,

To exercise his/her freewill & experience the consequences!

As a Parent,
My task is to make my child able & capable,

To keep aside my ego & be by his/her side!

My task is to guide & educate,

To let be & not frustrate!
My task is allow him/her to ponder,

And see my child grow into a Wonder!

This poem is for all parents

It is not easy to be free - this requires choices to be evaluated, decisions to be made, consequences to be lived. Add to freedom is the responsibility that one has to have not only of oneself and one’s actions, but of the various tasks that child has chosen to do, of resolving all possible conflicts, of taking and giving feedback, of raising one’s voice and be heard and finally responsible of making oneself happy.

Good News - He loses his notebooks every one hour, so he decided to use paper.
Another Good News - we rejected his idea and insisted on notebook/ drawing books

We bought new notebooks for him - he paid the cost and exclaimed “oh this is costly”. We thought “now that he knows the value of the notebooks, he will keep them in place”

After few days, he was back with lost notebooks and drawing books

We again procured the notebooks and stationery with him, again he said “oh my god, so much money”
We again thought “now that he knows the value of the notebooks, he will keep them in place”

After few days, he was back with lost notebooks and drawing books

This time he made his own drawing book with empty pages (we needed a book not loose pages, and he wanted to save money, both win win)...the journey continues.

Good news - he is losing and we both are coming up different strategies:), else life will be so boring!!

Children can be so observant that they will notice every minute detail. Children can be so lost in their fantasies that they ignore everything else. Children can be so goal oriented that they will try all possible ethical and unethical means to achieve it. Children can be so immersed in the process that they give a damn about the outcome.

Any which way, they have taught that life is not about A constant, A theory, A structure, A system, A result.

Can we understand and work with children this unlimiting perspective. Are we open to opening up? ISP the art of parenting invites you to do that .

Anyone who's planning for a child
Anyone who's pregnant
Anyone who's is anyway related to a child from 0-6 yrs,
Can attend tomorrow ,Sunday, It starts at 11am and continues till 2pm
If you like it register