Coaching Classes for Parents

The Bollywood film Taare Zameen Par was perhaps a coaching class that the nation attended, on understanding, how to deal with a kid with dyslexia. It showed us the frustration that parents encounter because of their ignorance of the child's condition. They believe that their son is plain lazy and is shirking work in school.  The movie brought awareness of learning disabilities and jolted the audience to ask whether they were being just as unreasonable with their children as the father in the film. They realized that the father’s tyrannical behavior was driven by ignorance of his child’s disability.Parenting is a complex task. Parents use information and put it in the framework of their family values as they bring up their young ones. While values remain relatively stable, information keeps changing rapidly. New information makes us question our own assumptions, world view and beliefs. New information changes the conversation between parents and children. Handling someone who is thirteen needs very different parenting skills than someone who is nineteen though both maybe clubbed in the common category called teenagers. Handling a teenager today is very different from someone who brought up their children in the seventies or eighties. That is because the parent and progeny both have new information about the world and this impacts their behavior and choices.For example, if parents do not understand the meaning of rating symbols on the video games they buy for their children they may be unwittingly exposing their children to inappropriate content. Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) ratings are designed to provide information about the content in computer and video games so consumers, especially parents, can make an informed purchase decision. When this information is held against the family values, the parents can take the decision whether their child should be exposed to the violence level that the game contains.Chances are that your parents never took lessons on parenting. You might argue that they did a fine job without taking lessons. That was a world where information was changing gently and therefore the parents' world had a very large degree of overlap and similarity with the child's. Exposure to the family values through parents was enough to ensure that the children would be confident enough to carve their own path.The customs and childrearing practices and the caretaker psychology have a profound influence on the child’s development. Parents need to have the same information that their children are exposed to, so that they can have meaningful talks at the dining table. Today this information gap reduces the effectiveness of parents.We have coaching classes to learn languages, to get into colleges and even some on how to win reality shows on television. But we do not have classes that help parents become well informed. I suggest coaching classes to help parents get in sync with the world their children live in. These classes could possibly help in getting parents to realign their own assumptions to current realities. Why not have experts who can update parents and help parents be more effective today.Every parent wishes the best and nothing but the best for their progeny. That means learning, unlearning and preparing themselves actively.  Parenting is an ever evolving role. Parents pass on the values that they model through their behavior. That cannot be taught by anyone else.Should we only depend on popular cinema to educate people on parenting? Think about it.--------------------------Watch the film Taare Zameen Par here <click here>