Transcript for ep 12
Welcome to SHE is Confident. Hi! This is Deon Teh and in this episode, I will be sharing with you about OUR CHILD IS UNIQUE.
Do you know your child’s happiness index? Have you ever wondered if your child is truly happy or simply believes that he or she is happy?
Nowadays, parents are feeling stressful when it comes to educating their children. They find it hard to discipline their children and maintain a good relationship with them.
As parents, we bring along our past childhood experiences, and this influences the way we bring up our children. For instance, if a child is disciplined by his parents using the cane, after growing up and becoming a parent, he will in turn use the same method to his own child and this negative cycle continues over generations.
Back in the past, this method may be effective as our country was not yet stable and still developing, our parents were in survival mode and working hard to meet basic needs. They hardly have time to look after the emotional needs of their children.
Now as our society advances, people are more concerned about the emotional and psychological well being. We parents are sandwiched between traditional teaching methods and modern ones.
When we become parents, we expect that our children are able to do many things, to be extraordinary and outstanding like how our parents expected us to do so. When they cannot do so, we get mad at them and discipline or lecture them.
When we see other children achieving something, we also want the same for our children and force them to achieve the same results, regardless of their abilities, or whether they are stressed, happy, or unhappy.
Hence, many parents do not have good relationships with their children.
In this process, we have forgotten that our children are all unique. We cannot use one method to standardise all. The same method that works for one child, may not work for another, even if they are siblings or twins.
If we do not change our ways and insist on the traditional methods, our relationship with our child will worsen.
It is possible that our relationship with our child can be improved by just the way we think.
Take my son for instance, I enrolled him into piano classes when he was 4 years old.
I made him practise everyday. Hoping that he can become an outstanding pianist and fulfil my dreams as I did not have the opportunity to learn it. However he was not interested in playing the piano at all.
He did not want to practise and we stopped the classes.
When he was in primary school, I engaged a piano teacher for him, hoping that he might like playing the piano. He was unhappy and still did not like the classes and he even thought that I wanted to show him off by letting him learn the piano.
It broke my heart hearing it. I only wanted the best for him and he misunderstood my intentions. Through this incident, our relationship was strained.
We eventually gave up and stopped the classes.
On the other hand, he picked up painting by himself when he was 11. I did not force him to go for lessons, he requested for art materials and even went online to search for art tutorials and learn the different skills by himself. And now, he is still passionate about drawing and painting.
I realised that I have been too demanding to my child, I have pinned too much hopes to him and by doing so, I have neglected his happiness.
Yes, many of us would think our children are still young and are not able to think for themselves and hence will need our guidance. Of course when it comes to moral issues , we still do need to teach and guide them.
Children these days are not lacking opportunity in education. We as parents cannot be superficial and really need to zoom in deeper into their inner hearts, guide them to find their direction in life.
My relationship with my child improved and his happiness index went up when I started to do the following:
First, I become a buddy to my son and I try to understand him better , listen to him and find out what is the root cause of his problems with no judgement, as we are all imperfect.
Then I learn new parenting methods, by reading books or actively joining the parent-talks conducted by my child’s school. Because I believe that my parents’ generation method does not apply to this modern generation and I stop using the same traditional method that my parents used on me.
Every child is unique and special, they are not born to fulfill our expectations and the best love we can give is allowing him to be himself without pampering or spoiling, so that they can have a balance and happy life and can find their mission in their life.
If you want to talk about transforming your inner child, healing your relationships with yourself and money, connect with me through my Facebook and the link is in the show notes.
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/leeyongteh
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I look forward to seeing you in my next episode where I will be sharing with you on two ways communication.
