If we get angry with our children while trying to guide them about right or wrong, is that due to controlling mentality? How can we best guide them?

From Munish P

While growing children..we tend to loose temper quite often assuming we are helping them to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong..given the kind of exposure children have these days outside home. Would you equate that propensity also with tendency to control children and hence loosing temper very often. What alternative we can use while dealing with children? Pl help

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna question from Manish Nandwani Prabhu is our wanting to control our children and show them what is right and what is wrong and losing the temper when we when they don’t understand is that also due to our controlling mentality if yes then what alternative do we have by which we can guide our children and especially nowadays children have such bad exposure that unless they are told what is right or wrong they can very easily get misled answer the controlling mentality is wanting others to do what we want to do what we want them to do however everybody has free will and Krishna wants them to use their free will in such a way that they can get the best benefit and he wants that for us also so wanting others to do the way we want them to do is controlling mentality but wanting others to do what Krishna would want them to do that is not controlling that is guiding mentality so although we are not controllers like Krishna we also have some control and we are meant to use our control on behalf of Krishna as a supreme controller and to guide our dependence accordingly now as far as parenting is concerned certainly it is our responsibility to show our children by our words and our actions what is right and what is wrong so there are four kinds of parents i have talked about this in my lectures on the Pruthu Maharaj pastime where talk about how Pruthu Maharaj was acting as a parent for the children and the lectures are there on the school scientist website but suffice it to say here these four kinds are they are negligent indulgent authoritarian and authoritative so basically parents have to give two things to their children they have to give love and they have to give discipline so love is what is children look forward to often but discipline is what they need so negligent parents give neither love nor discipline they just let the children do whatever they don’t care for the children so that is a very bad kind of parenting and indulgent parents are those who give love but no discipline now Dhritarashtra is an example of this whatever Duryodhana wanted he gave it to him and no matter of what heinous deed Duryodhana did Dhritarashtra never corrected it so indulgent parenting is also not good then there is authoritarian parenting so authoritarian parenting means the parents give discipline but no love so that means the parent just tell the child do this do this do this don’t do this don’t do this unless you act as authority but don’t act as a act as a friend act as a act as actually a parent and show our love the way it needs to be done so many times because we feel as parents and if we are devotee parents we feel that we are morally right and they are wrong and therefore we saw we overemphasize our authority and often we don’t show enough love we display become even worse because we think that maybe we are getting materially attached and that may complicate things children cannot differentiate between material and spiritual even we may not be able to very easily differentiate our focus should be especially when we are dealing with our very intimate family members we shouldn’t bother too much about material or spiritual what we should focus on is helping them to come close to Krishna helping them to grow into proper human beings so if we if we neglect to show love then that will lead to that will lead to their becoming either they will go too withdrawn into themselves or they’ll become rebellious and later on and when they come to adolescent and teenage they will go completely out of control so authoritarian is not at all good because it alienates the children as long as we have authority over them we will be able to control them but as soon as they go into teenage and they become major then they will just rebel against what has been taught to them and in fact they may do they may go away from Krishna not just because they want to enjoy the material world but they want they go away from Krishna because they want to rebel against us because they resent the authority that we have had on them so that should never happen so authoritative parents are those who give a proper balance of love and discipline that means these parents tell the children what is what to do and what not to do and they take time to explain to the children why this is to be done why this is not to be done now how much the children can understand and how that is to be explained that will vary according to the age and the level of the children but basically there may be disciplining which has to be done but along with that the offering of explanation itself is a sign of love and apart from that also at other times when adequate love is shown then what happens is there is a proper understanding proper balance that there is the parents that the children feel loved valued cared and then once they feel that my parents care for me then they want to do what the parents want not because of fear of punishment but because of affection and then when the children grow up then they actually are grateful for what the parents have given them so now sometimes despite our best effort the children may not do what what is good for them so is getting angry at that time a reflection of controlling mentality in general getting angry losing our temper only versus the situation so if they have done something which is wrong then just pretending as if it is everything is right would be indulgence and that would be counterproductive in the wrong run but just exploding against them may also not be the solution so expressing our displeasure assertively not aggressively that means we give them some freedom and we also tell them that this is the way you need to use the freedom and that way what we do there’s a proper balance of love and discipline we can surely tell them what is wrong and tell them why it is wrong and express to them our disappointment and displeasure if they do something wrong despite our best effort despite our best guidance but then we we should tell let them see that we still love them we still care for them and that way over a period of time they’ll grow up so whether our losing our temper is because of the controlling mentality or it is because of very deep concern for others we can’t really say you know we may want to show the whole society how good a child I have and that may be our motive and if that happens then that is not really a devotional mentality always so we have to know that Krishna gives freedom to everyone and we also have to give freedom to them and if we give them proper guidance not just discipline and control but also guidance then they will themselves grow up to make wise choices if they taste the sweetness of devotion in their childhood in their formative years then even if the world allures them later on temporarily they may fall for the world’s allurements but they have tasted Krishna and the taste of Krishna is far sweeter and far richer than whatever they have whatever the world can offer and they will come back to Krishna so ultimately love means we have to set them free but the important thing is that we shouldn’t set them free without telling them about the right things and as far as disciplining is concerned it is good to discipline in a mature way that means not in a knee-jerk way in a rush of temper so if we are to have a tendency to lose temper and then when we lose temper then we may speak or do things which will become lifelong scars in the hearts of children so it’s better that if you have lost temper at that time to retreat from the situation calm down and then give the discipline in a mature way so of course this is all this is much easier said than done and every child is different every parent is different every individual is different every situation is different therefore there cannot be any specific things to tell but there are broad principles and overall sometimes we may err more on the side of love sometimes we may err more on the side of discipline but gradually if we aim to have a balance between the two then we can actually help our children to not only do the right thing but also gain the intelligence and the confidence by which they can keep doing the right thing even when we are not there to guide them or even when they they are not necessarily they are not in our control they have grown up and that when our values are chosen by them because they have become their values because they see these are not our or their values these are Krishna’s values these are in our best interest that will be our ultimate success as parents. Thank you.