Child Raising Tips

 

Birthdays have a curious way of making us stop, think and take stock. Last week my eldest son celebrated his fifth birthday. It seems amazing that five years have gone by since I became a father for the first time. And my son’s fifth birthday gave me pause to think whether I have lived up to the ideal father I always wanted to be.

Over the last five years I have learnt many things about parenting and most important among them is that time flies by and that we will never be able to recapture our children’s childhood. We have but one opportunity to make it or break it for our children – we will never have a second chance.

 

Scientific research has shown that the brain grows most rapidly during the first five years of a child’s life. The experiences and relationships formed by a child during those formative years will have an impact on them for the rest of their life. This reinforces the famous rabbinic dictum (Avot 5:25) that a five year old child is ready for the study of the scriptures – implying an intellectual maturity sufficient to comprehend the ideas found in the Bible.

When the famous Biblical commentator, Rashi (1040 – 1105) wrote his commentary on the Torah he said that it would deal with textual questions that would be obvious to a five year old. From ancient times till today the first five years of a child’s life have been regarded of paramount importance for their life long development.

Experts claim that during the first ten years of life a child learns and imbibes the values modeled by their parents. Parents know full well how their children imitate them. In fact we see our children becoming mini versions of ourselves before our very eyes. In a word: parents have ten years in which to turn their babies into responsible adults who will be a credit to society. Beyond that point their influence is far more limited.

The greatest responsibility and privilege humans have is to raise decent adults who will become useful and constructive members of society.

The difficulty for many people, however, is that we get busy with the variables of life such as career advancement and money and we take the perceived stable aspects for granted. When our children are young, as long as we take care of their elementary needs their existence is stable. Just as most people do not spend much time thinking about how the sun rises and sets each day we often do not make the effort to think about how we are bringing up our children.

Ironically, many people only give a lot of thought to their children when there is a problem. But when things are going well most parents just go with the flow and do not think deeply about how they react towards their children or which strategy they are using to raise them. Possibly with this in mind, the fifth er Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn (1860 – 1920) said that each person has an obligation to think about the education of their children for an hour each day.

Although an hour may seem to be rather a long time, the rationale behind this idea is obvious. No one would contemplate attempting a difficult and complex task without the appropriate training and preparation. This daily contemplation focuses a parent to seek and develop the skills and strategies needed to educate each child according to his or her particular needs so that the child’s formative years are passed in the most productive manner possible.

While all parents worry periodically about their children, I thoroughly recommend this more structured approach. If daily contemplation is not feasible, then at least once a week, parents should  take time out to reflect and contemplate on how they are raising their children and whether they are living up to their own ideals of parenting. Apart from impacting on our short term child/parent interactions, this will affect our children positively far into their adulthood.