How Nature Can Teach You All About Child Rearing.

Nature is beautiful and all compassing and we all have a lot to learn from it. A mother is just like a gardener, who looks after the plants in the garden and brings out the best in each one of the plants. Yes, the mother is the gardener who watches each season of life come and go, who prunes the children, brings out the best in them and likewise changes with the time pruning past life away. So, let us see how we nurture our children as we care for a garden from planting the seed to putting in hard work to make the plant grow and bloom into fruit bearing plants or useful citizens of the world.

It is quite right; we decide each morning how we are going to look at the going out in the garden. One attitude could be that you can just not wait to go outside and look at the garden and smell the fragrant flowers. The other attitude could be “What a garden, I have so many weeds to remove.” The same applies to child rearing. We could treat it as “What a burden, I have to attend to the children all day” or “Today is a new day, let me see what I can do to appreciate my children” or ”What I can do to improve my children or make them happy.” So you as a mother you can decide how you look at your child or you can decide how you treat your child.

Yes, let us come down to the fact that if you wish to do gardening you have to dirty your hands and clothes and take trouble to wash them. The same applies to rearing of children. Nobody reared children just by sitting beside them. You have to put in hard work, go through the ups and downs of parenting if you wish to bring out good, well-behaved and intelligent children. Parenting or childrearing is difficult, involves labor, has good and bad moments, but it is all worth it to rear a beautiful garden or rear beautiful human beings.

You as a gardener would be admiring others garden and looking for ways by which you could make your garden beautiful. Admiring other peoples garden is not wrong at all, but you should be ready to admire and appreciate what you have in your garden. Yes, all children have some good points or talents or habits. It is wrong to think, ”If only I was the mother of Albert Einstein, or the mother of Amitabh Bachaan, or the mother of Sachin Tendulkar”, be proud to be the mother of your child, every child is special, who may be tomorrow a great person, if not Albert Einstein, Amitabh Bachaan, or Sachin Tendulkar, but a great person in his own right. Not all children can be e Albert Einstein, Amitabh Bachaan, or Sachin Tendulkar in future.

Yes, it is not greener on the other side, but in the place on the lawn where you water it the most. Mothers should never make it a habit to compare their child with other children, be their classmates or friends. Most children have their good and bad points. The tact of a mother in rearing children lies in knowing a child’s limitations and plus points and in accentuating his plus points to make him an expert in which talents he already has. In addition, every mother should realize that there are flowering plants and others, some needing more water and fertilizers than another. No two plants are alike, so also no two children. So a mother should rear and nurture them as she tends to a garden by giving the importance required by each child.

Fertilizers are like support given to the children to grow and blossom. No two plants are alike regarding the quality and quantity of fertilizer they need to grow and give fruits. Similar is the case of 2 children. One may try to excel in class when he is praised, while the other may need tuitions and still one may need to be weeded off bad company. No single treatment may work for all children. 

Yes, weed or flower lies in the eyes of the beholder. Just like in a garden one could figure out this difference the same applies to child-rearing also. You decide the lens you wear to view your child, a dark one or a happy and clear one. Your child may have extra-ordinary talents and may have won various quiz performances, but may be very poor in playing games. There are 2 ways a mother rearing a child could look at this situation. The first one being, “My son’s name is Kapil, he hardly plays cricket, he cannot even hold a cricket bat” or ”My son Kapil is the leader of his college Quiz team, he has won many prizes too”. Every mother should realize and feel proud of her child’s unusual traits. No child can be forced to do things as no plant in a garden can be. So children learn to do things in their own time and cannot be forced by a mother.

In addition, just like a gardener cannot constantly focus on the imperfections of his garden, a mother cannot be constantly worried about what her child should do or achieve in life. A mother may have wished her son was a cardiologist, who could earn a lot of money as a surgeon, but her son may want to or has now become a research scholar, who is interested in improving the world by advances in science, the mother should be able to accept it and not brood on his not becoming a cardiologist. Her son’s happiness should be hers and she should be ready to change with the times; don a modern shirt instead of the old fashioned one.

Yes, mothers do accept children reared by you as annuals and perennials. Some of the children may come often to their mothers for help and counsel, while others may come only once a while. The same applies to visits of children to meet their aging parents. Some may be abroad and may just ring up parents once a week to enquire about their welfare and just hang up a few minutes later saying,” OK Ma, take care, I love you.” while others may live with their parents and help their parents physically in their old age.  

To conclude, mothers of well brought up children, do believe nothing is permanent and that applies to the contact your children have with you. Your children would one day have their own family and life to deal with and are just like a sparrow, whom its mother gives birth to, but are born to one day learn to fly and fly away into the broad universe, to face all that comes its way. You as a mother existed only to make them well-rounded personalities, so just enjoy each day as it comes and thank God for all the beautiful memories of your children.