I am a father to a 3 year old lad and he is definitely not the type who listens or even has inclination to do what he is told to do. As all the parents do I tried all the methods to make him listen and do what I want him to do.
I tried seducing him with sweet treats, it works the initial 5 attempts with degrading efficiency on each attempt,
I tried black mailing by describing mean extra terrestrial creature who will come and snatch his favorite thing (which changes on a weekly basis), it didn’t even make scratch on him on the contrary he enjoyed the whole drama.
I tried voice modulation techniques (also read as shouting at various sound levels), which basically results in me having sore throat and he matching my voice with his own version of Voice Modulation (which makes it impossible for me to maintain my prosthetic harsh look at him and stop laughing at his antics).
There where other stupid techniques that were tried and as usual failed drastically.
As all hopes failed and all the internet based techniques failed to show any results, I remembered somebody telling me that ” Children learn the most by imitating”.
If imitation is their way of learning and if parents are the obvious choice to imitate then all I had to do was do the things that I want him to do myself in front of him.
I thought about it and contemplated a lot on this idea and wanted to try this method also.
The first thing I did was to put all his toys back to Toy Bag after his daily exploits, without asking him to do any of it. The first two days he ignored but the third day he joined me in putting his toys back in the bag. Then I starting having dinner at same time when my wife feeds him with all the skills of a Car Salesman, Lawyer and Barathnatyam Dancer combined. He observed the poise with which we have our food and the enjoyment of it. It took some time and by about 10 days he started asking for his own plate and insisted that he will handle his food himself .
After about a month things started to fall in place.
THIS IDEA WORKS
We started to do things the way we want our three year old to do it and slowly, one by one the pieces in the puzzle are starting to fall in place.
There are some Off-Days when things go out of control and our Hero manages to get on our nerves. But at end of the day before sleeps envelopes me, I contemplate on why this Off-Day happened. I by and large feel that we as his parents have something wrong. Either our behavior, our speech was not on par or our love for him on that day was not 100%.
Slowly every day I keep realizing that if we (parents) start observing ourselves, our behavior, our attitudes towards various aspect of life, our priorities and try correct many of the shortfalls in our own selves, then our children will automatically follow us. We don’t have to teach them a lot, they learn a lot quicker than us and are definitely a lot smarter than us. All we have to do is to make sure that environment in which they grow is fertile with vibrant energy, proper attitudes, calmness and great role models. Our children will on their own blossom into awesomely fragrant and energetic Human Beings, who will definitely make this place into a far better one than we have done so far.
JKS
Hyper Smash
P.S: It's just the beginning, the journey of experiments and self discovery continues........
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