How a Child Is Taught to View a Past Troubling Incident Matters

A child, just like us adults, also faces challenges in life — at his or her level, mostly. Starting with health concerns, issues with classmates, friends, and sometimes even teachers, and difficulty in studies.

Every trouble has a duration. It comes, then you undergo it for some time, and then it goes.

How you face it and solve it is very important. Equally important is how you take it after it is gone.

Right from childhood, we should instill this feeling in the child — that troubles are only meant to make us stronger. The difficulty is only when you face it for the first time. After that, you know how to face it, if at all it comes again. You have become both strong and equipped to face it next time.

Tell the child what happens when a virus attacks the body. You can easily make the child understand this by taking the case of viral infections such as chicken pox. You get it only once in your lifetime. Once the virus attacks, the body itself develops antibodies. Then the virus will not be able to attack again. That means the body has developed strength against the virus.

Whenever you face a problem, there are two things that happen with your mind also.
One — you will be cautious, you will be alert so that the problem doesn’t happen again.
Two — you become stronger and would face it much more easily and efficiently if at all it comes back. You will also develop the capability to face not just the same problem, but many similar problems as well.

Mahatma Gandhi was once asked — What if the Afghans invade India after the British leave?
He said — If we are able to make the British leave India, we would have learned how to face any invader — why just the British? British are just invaders. If we are successful with them, then we would know how to face any invader. We would be much better at dealing with any invader.

This is the attitude we should instill in children.

Suppose the child faces a criminal on the way to school. Rather than making the child fearful about the incident or paranoid, tell him or her — Now my boy, my girl is much stronger. You have learned how to manage this kind of situation. Nobody can harm my child.

Normally, parents blame: Why did you go there? Why did you talk to him? You should have been more careful. How will we trust you?
The parents get paranoid.

Rather than that, appreciate what the child did. Make the child realize that he or she has become stronger after this incident. Let them not run away from challenges in life. Let them face challenges and emerge stronger and stronger day by day.

You don’t have to push them into challenging situations. Situations will come on their own in everyone’s life. You may not be able to be present with them in every situation.

But the summary that you give the child — that you highlight after the episode or incident — is what will form the character of the child.

Ramaswamy Sastry and Vighnesh Ghanapaathi