Aditi Mathur and Ratnesh Mathur
My friend Sridhar has been asking me this question – what are the core values one should develop in one’s child? Recently, a parent lied to his child who was unwilling to leave my office. He said, “Uncle is closing the office, so let’s go.” – This was not true! What is the point of developing conventional values if we are all going to anyway follow them as a matter of convenience later? So what values will I teach my child?
Here is my five must-teach list:
1. The value of experimentation (or trying)
I will let my child, who loves to experiment, try different things in life. The more the child tries, the more he or she gets to explore. The more the child explores, the more he or she learns. The more the child learns, the more the child gathers raw material and tools for life! I will let him fail and impress upon him to treat both failure and success with the same regard and motivate him to just keep trying. I will encourage my child to try different solutions to a problem and will try to ‘sell’ flexibility as the key to effectiveness.
In order to develop experimentation some of the questions that I will ask are: What are the different ways you can do this? How else can you do this? What other kind of experiences would you want? What have you learnt from this failure/success? What else can we explore? In what other ways can this give different results?
The authors are part of an alternate school – Aarohi (aarohilife.org) and conduct parent and teacher training as well as help people start preschools/learning centers amable.in.