Spiritual Parenting: Part 1 – Dangerous Expectations
April 15, 2009 by Riya Agnihotri
Filed under Spiritual Parenting
Below are quotations from Chopra’s book on Spiritual Parenting:
“We always remembered that our children were gifts from the Universe, and we let them know that we felt this way… ”
“We let them know how privileged and honoured we felt to help raise them. We felt as though we didn’t own or possess them…”
“We didn’t project our own expectations on to them…”
“We didn’t feel the need to compare them – for good or bad with anyone else.”
“This was our way of making them feel complete within themselves…”
Wow, what a handful of things to think about in terms of our own parenting styles and techniques. Perhaps it’s even a little uncomfortable to read such things because it makes us painfully aware of the things that we are ‘not doing’.
But the beauty of Chopra’s analysis does not concern – doing anything - at all.
On a deeper level, his words are about attempting to bring about an entire shift in mental, emotional thoughts and attitudes, that we as parents have, rather than drastically changing our actions . Only then can we be at some kind of peace with the most difficult job of all.
From my own understanding of Deepak Chopra; I firmly believe his words are not written to highlight the inadequacies of our parenting – they are merely asking us to make a shift in our everyday inter-cranial dialogues!
I was listening to a Pakistani Radio programme today on the importance of fathers in the family. Fathers, within South East Asian Families all over the world are often patriarchal, authoritative figures. The programme expressed the importance of having peaceful, communicative familial relationships and the point was made that Asian fathers often remain considerably aloof from their children – often resulting in negative relationships being carried in to adulthood. These relationships may well lead to other emotional problems in later life.
In my own life, I have witnessed this in almost every Asian family I have ever come in to contact with. Within British Asian families (and I am sure the same could be said in the US) there seems to be a disturbing need to ‘stamp our marks’ on our children.
Western Asian children often grow up with the notions that life decisions about occupations, marital partners, homes etc should be done in consultation with parents. There is a feeling that as children we must ‘please’ our parents and that we ‘owe’ them something for bringing us up.
These traditional ideas of obligation are often perpetuated by the idealism of Eastern notions that we ‘look after’ our elderly and respect them. In fact in Indian Soaps (there are hundreds) we are reminded of the value in archaic traditions.
One example may be the importance of the Indian Bahu (with her blood red vermillion and traditional garb) sacrificing all, to be accepted in to her husband’s family. People seem to applaud the archetypal daughter who massacres her desires to make her parents happy; they almost salute the sons who shun their controlling wives to put their domineering parents first.
Where on earth did we go wrong? The Indian and Pakistani media is a cultural tool and it is still flying in the face of spirituality. It is forgetting the true importance of our individual journey and how supremely important it is to achieve our ‘own’ dreams.
Off course our parents are extremely important. As many Eastern religions purport: parents are akin to Godliness. That I am not denying – because as parents we hold an awful lot of power over our children and this must be utilised wisely – or our children will not be able to fulfil their potentiality.
Next Post: The Ways In Which We Can Try to Alter Our Mindsets - A Little.