Page 53 - https://ia800806.us.archive.org/12/items/mwk-eng-book/Leading-a-Spiritual-Life.pdf
P. 53
Leading A Spiritual Life
Parents, having failed to understand their children’s
minds, go on complaining about them. It is, of course
possible to change your children’s way of thinking, but
you must first be endowed with the intellectual ability to
properly address the minds of your educated children.
The fact is that in our present society the majority
of parents are traditionally minded, but they want
to educate their offspring in modern educational
institutions. This requires an approach which can take
in a blend of the traditional and the modern. And
then parents, rather than give up on their traditional
thinking, should re-define it in order to make it
understandable to the new generation. It is this failure
that has created the problem of children’s resistance to
the right type of education and the problem of how to
overcome this resistance. So any shortcoming in the
sphere of education is the parents’ fault. It is not so
much a question of re-conditioning of the mind as a
question of self-training. If parents want to bring about
a change of attitude towards learning in their children,
they must prepare themselves to be good counsellors.
It is weak counselling on the part of parents that has
created this problem.
Another problem is pampering. Parents have great
affection for their children and this often leads to their
pampering them. While affection is good, pampering is
bad. Pampering fosters an easy-going nature in children
and that is the worst kind of nature for any person to
have in this world of harsh realities. Pampered children
do not heed advice. They know nothing but their own
desires. Harsh realities have no place in their dictionary.
52