Cultivating cultural values in our Children by Sanjay Chaturvedi

Recently I had gone to a hospital to see some ailing relative. While I was waiting outside for some other person I overheard the talks of a family sitting nearby. By the discussion I realised that they had come to get their daughter’s check up done who was expecting a baby. The mother was educating the daughter about how she should take care of herself, what she should eat, what to do and what she should not etc .

In the conversation Inoticed that the girl was getting bored of the preaches she was given by her mother and some aunt with them. She was preached for worshinping regularly, talking positive things, not to be angry and to see pictures of beautiful children.

While overhearing the conversation my brain started going backwards in the history visualising the childhood time of the pregnant lady. Presently she was about 25 years of age. But why a need arose to educate him for being a good mankind? By advising anyone to talk positive, see beautiful pictures, worship daily etc. only mean we want a person to be like that only to become an ideal mankind. But why we need to educate the ‘to-be mother’ at this stage? Had not been this better if she would have learnt these habits from the childhood. While she was about to step into this world, her mother would also have practiced these things. But if her habits in those months have affected the child the girl must be practicing the same in life from the very childhood. She would have become a relegious person, not annoying anyone, non-violent, honest and comprising to a good human being.

Writing this article is not to dicourage the ‘to-be parents’ against following the guidelines for being a good human being. The point is that if we practice ourselves to be a good human beings in our day to day life, we don’t have to bother about the child yet to born. He or She would be getting these habits from our DNA itself. No need to show extra care of our habits and our thoughts.

For example the child learns the way the festivals are celebrated. Be it Holi, Deepawali, Christmas or Ramzan the child is moulded into the culture he or she is trained to follow. The same way, if we, as a parent ensure that upbringing of a child is in conformity of the qualities of a good human being, may we not face the abuses, road razes, crime, violence and all the negativity spread around us. The basic quality of a human is not unknown to anyone but still we equip our children with the traits of physical violence against the people not abiding to our wishes. We teach our children to speak a lie when we want them to take a leave from school, college or office. We ask them to get fake medical certificates made. We tell them to say ‘papa ghar par nahin hain’ when we don’t want to attend to a call or meet some visitor. Actually these are the seeds of cactus we are sowing. These seeds would be grown up to the cactus the thorns of which would hurt not only to our body but also our soul.

So, instead of teaching our pregnant daughter or daughter-in-law to behave a good human being it is we the parents who have to make our next generation a real human being. It is good that we share good thoughts, good articles and good sayings on our facebook page and whats app messenger, but more important is to practice the same in our lives. Irrespective to any religion or the country we have to be the right human and the right civilian. Then without planning anything our coming generations would be the real incarnation which the god must be in mind while making human beings.
If this article hits your cauntiousness in positive terms, please follow your heart. Responses even against this article are welcome.