Can We Help Our Children Grow Up in Trust?

Today, my teenage daughter, declared at the top of her voice, that we as parents don’t trust her. I was shocked to hear this. Obviously ,her pent-up feelings found an outlet in her outburst. Since many days, we were trying to pose  a lot of uncomfortable  questions to her, which were making her disturbed. She didn’t like us following her friends, she didn’t like us forcing her to study, she didn’t like us to intrude in her private space which she was creating fro herself. This experience was a wake-up call for me,and I undertook a deeper introspection, which provided me new insights. I am sure many of the parents may be facing similar-like situation.

As parents, we don’t find time for our children. We don’t understand the need for spending quality time with them. In whatever time we spend, we force our fixed notions of life on them. We force our judgement on them on many occasions. We tell them what is right, and what is wrong from our own perspective. We don’t present the facts in a balanced way, which make the children develop their faculties to judge. We analyse the situation from a biased perspective, and force our children to accept our view-point. All this destroys the chances of trust-building.

Children can develop trust in parents when they see their parents as friends. This change in perspective requires much efforts from the parents. The children can trust us when we have a firm belief in their potentialities, and we stop comparing them with other children. The moment we realize that our children have unique potential, which can be nurtured by us in their field of his/her choice, the seeds of trust sprout up. We get the right wisdom to deal with our child, and the mutual trust begins to develop. Our huge expectations from our child begins to diminish, and we try to locate the treasure in our child by looking what lies within our child. We are not bothered by our child’s external behaviour, simply because we ourselves change our thinking.

Helping children to grow up in trust will be a big challenge for the parents in the times to come. Simply because trust-deficit in all walks of life is increasing. If we make efforts make children grow up in trust, then we can make immense contribution in creating of a new society. Our children can be the biggest ambassadors of trust-building when they mature as adults. Their lessons in trust-building will become an effective guide for them to become change-agents in their fields of profession.