PRESS ARTICLES

"All Things Bright and Beautiful... "

ARTICLE

If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands! Joy to the world… Sound familiar don’t they? These are some of the many nursery rhymes that we teach our tiny tots when they take their first steps into school. If we measure the meanings ensconced in some of the words they are full of substance. And even though their interpretations are pretty simple, if taken in the right spirit, can teach us much of how we can flourish and enjoy the pleasures of simple day-to-day living.

Why is it then that we aren’t able to follow these uncomplicated dictates when it comes to raising up our kids and in our anxiety that they be the best, most successful, revered, and god knows what else, we forego the joys of parenting and run after that elusive condition – happiness?

When I meet most parents of today and ask – what would you want for your child? The quickest and un-thought out response is – success. Very few parents say they want happy kids. But is there a relationship between happiness and success? Fewer tell me that they want kids who would be contended with who they are. Every one is imitating and wanting to be like someone else! Even less tell me that they want their kids to be at ease with themselves. Because to them easiness equates with laid-backness. And if the child doesn’t show that desperateness, that killer-instinct, as people call it, to them it means that he will be a nobody, an also ran, a non-entity.

Parents would do well if they stepped back and allowed their kids to just be. To ‘live’ their childhood. To come into bloom at their own pace and time. After all haven’t we got years ahead of us to make what we want of ourselves? Or does everything have to be accomplished by age ten….