Positive Parenting - A conversation with daughters

Positive Parenting - A conversation with daughters

An interesting conversation happened during the kids mid-term holiday with my 10-year-old daughter. I called her 10 times from a different room to get her out of comfort zone away from the laptop. She was furious and crazy asking why you are calling many times - I said don't overdo the same thing but try to do diverse things - read books, paint, practice music, dance, keyboard etc. I got a book recently "This is Vegan Propaganda", from author Ed Winters. I said it's simple English you can read if you like and ask if you don't understand something. She said it's propaganda I don't like to read. I said don't judge the book by it's cover, read the first 2 pages at least. My younger daughter took it and read the first page. The elder one continued on the 2nd page. I observed that her opinion was not the same after reading 2 pages. I might have instilled some thinking into her to respect a different perspective and don't be judgmental and come to conclusions so quickly. 

I also said I watched a hard drive full of movies when I first came to the UK in 2011, probably watched movies worth my whole life in 10 months and got bored. We should do diverse things to engage us actively and most importantly give food for thought to our brain. I gave an example of my colleague asking for a challenging role as he felt monotonous and learning a new skill now.

She took it further and created this beautiful painting. Her imagination and interest in alien land, galaxies are clearly seen in her artwork.

After that she went back to her laptop, I went to her room and said you did 2 great things today: a wonderful painting & nice chocolate experiment and to my surprise she was doing some math's practice that her mom gave. She then played for some time and started watching videos. Her mom called for dinner a few times and was a little upset that she came late, and food had become cold, and she and her sister were not focused on eating dinner and some heated conversation started.

I joined the dinner table. I said to her again you are the most creative person in the house and have great potential if you put more focus. I said I don't know if your mom was that creative at your age, but you can certainly be more creative than her when you grow. She asked why I felt that way, I explained to her about the talent she has, and the atmosphere suddenly changed, as I observed her eyes lit up. I told you have shown great focus today but that is missing in dinner, so I thought to explain with empathy and it's phases Pity --> Sympathy --> Empathy. Younger daughter asked what's the difference? What's empathy? I said empathy is putting ourselves in others' shoes and asking why they experience that behaviour and be with them in that emotion. I said let's experiment empathy and put yourselves in your mom's position and ask why she was upset. Both daughters gave 10 reasons as not responding, ignoring, no focus, talking to each other etc. I said you got your answers, and you know what to do now and why your mom was upset. My younger daughter also said we need to use 5 whys here to get to the root cause of that behaviour from mom, I said well-done junior !

Dinner finished in the next few minutes and both daughters asked me to teach sudoku that I told them to learn many times earlier. Both daughters said let's do it with a pen, I reminded them 5 Rs; Reject, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Recycle. My younger one quickly joined me in finding a pencil and eraser as she understood what I am going to say with Reuse. We did a simple one, both understood logic quickly and the elder one wanted a competition with the winner announced. I said you can't compare yourselves with your sister who is 4 years younger to you, instead try to improve yourself with timers in the next 4 simple ones to be better at each time. Elder daughter also said we should team up and prepare vegan dishes and ask others to taste and give their verdict without telling them it's vegan.

While going to bed, I explained to my younger daughter about empathy again by quoting an example of her poking me a few times on Friday when I was hosting a meeting with 50+ people. I asked her to put herself in my position and tell me what would you do? Asked if her teacher asked her to host a call with 50 students and I badge in and distract her what would she do? I did that with little humour, so it all ended with laughter at bed time.

Reflecting on what happened yesterday, if we spend time with our kids, open up the conversation, make them curious, praise them for good things we can get the best out of them. And in that process, we can share important lessons and experiences that could probably shape their character on who they want to be! It was also an important lesson and reminder for me, be it parenting, or mentoring / coaching is all in our hands to give time and space for kids or colleagues to grow!

What's your parenting style and your conversation with your kids ?