It's Trump and Freedom of the new World Order and slavery your choice!
This particular sentence keeps haunting me time and again when I try to discipline my children and make them do certain things the way I want or the way it is expected.
Order with Freedom
Order with freedom is a chapter from one of the books of J.Krishnamurti. A parent like me who is going against odds to make my children the real next gen kids who shall be environment conscious and understand the life and appreciate it truly in the real sense.
So what is it exactly? I give them 10 options and ask them to choose one out of it. If nothing interests them, then yes they have no other choice! As simple as it sounds. Well how do we go about it in real scenario? We adults are so engrossed in our work and our gadgets that we don't want our children to be part of it. So we just engage them in what they like. It's obvious to know that they like what the adult likes and is nothing but a gadget. So it's a TV or a cell phone or an iPad. They are engrossed and so are we in our gadget worlds and the end result is a brain suppressor making each one of us lazy bum. The solution or the way I tackle is lead by example. I make a conscious decision not to use these gadgets for at least a considerable amount of time when I am engaging them with any task. We work together in doing daily chores of house and treat each other as adults. For the simple reason, they like to be adults and like to copy us. Being nice and assertive is quite a challenge for us as parents and to behave the same all time. But practice makes anyone perfect and so we achieve it and the results show as our children grow.
It looks like order and freedom seem like two contradicting words or may be two sides of the same coin. The way I see it is, if we as parents follow a regular routine (discipline I am not too sure as it might come at a later stage because we have actually forgotten about this being adults) a set order, perhaps something that repeats everyday next day like we wake up brush take bath pray to God, our kids keep looking at us and eventually follow us and do it exactly the same. After all end of the day they like to be like us the adults in the house.
Now when we say freedom, what are we trying to achieve here? What is it really different or new? Freedom to me is, I am respected for what I think and act as. I know I may not be completely wrong neither right! Am I allowed to express the same? Am I being appreciated for it? So here comes the confusion between the generations.
We actually live in a society in a place that is filled with different culture, people, way of living, eating and what not! So how do we ensure we as parents appreciate it, so our children follow us? There is enough competition I see around us, our children and how can we ensure there is freedom created in here? Yes, that is the future of our next gen kids, Who eventually come out of it and feel free in their thinking and express themselves and believe in what they are up to! After all it's a cycle that life takes us through.
We have seen the rise and high of the competitive world. Now the whole world is talking about the traditional method of living earning and the belief system. I see our next gen kids are lucky to have the whole knowledge of information along with our traditional values added it it. A perfect combination one can expect for the future and here we the old gen can do is, support them with full freedom, of course ensuring we still retain our way of defined order, a way of doing it!