It was sometime in February that I was watching a movie and tears dropped from my eyes as I witnessed an emotional scene. My three and a half year old son, who was playing nearby, came to me and after wiping my tears, asked me why I was crying. As I could not explain to him that it was just an emotional thing I kept silent.
To my surprise, he cuddled my face in his tiny little hands and said, "Dear Mom, stop crying! You see everything will be fine. Why do you cry when I am here with you? You are my little good girl. So just get up and let's get ready for school".
On hearing him say this to me I could not help but laugh out aloud. Later, I realized that he had repeated almost the same thing which I tell him when he is crying due to one reason or the other and that was when I felt that my innocent baby was actually not so innocent!
The first time a child speaks he tries to copy what his parents have been telling him for a long time. Usually parents start with the words "Mama", "Papa", "Hello" etc. But then as the child continues learning and presumably starts speaking on his own, without being taught, we as parents tend to forget that he is still being tutored by us, the only difference being that we are now doing it in a more passive way.
We tend to use words and phrases that we do not want our child to utter, and when he speaks those very words, we wonder where he has learned them from. Even then, some of us do not realize that the child has learned the words from us only, when we were absent mindedly using them to take out our anger on someone around us. Instead we start passing on the blame to either the child's toddler friends or somebody who has talked to the child in our absence.
Some people would say, "How can we change the things we have been doing all our lives." I agree it is quite difficult to let go of habits that you have been following for the most part of your life. But then it is only difficult not impossible. If you want your child to be an epitome of perfect mannerism, you have to start by exemplifying the same behavior yourself.
And if you cannot do that, you have no moral right to expect any such thing from your child. It is after all, the parents, who set out the aims and goals of the child, in the first few years at least. So, if you as parents are not ready to rectify your bad behavior, then you will surely see a reflection of the same in your child after which you have little room to complain.
On the day my son was to join regular school, we dropped him and while returning from the school, my husband commented that perhaps the necessity to behave in the presence of our child, will help us improve on our certain bad habits. That is when I felt that children really are the father of men.
The author is a freelance writer who likes to write on a wide variety of subjects.
To know more about her writings, log on to http://www.meetusreflections.blogspot.com.
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