Wayne W. Dyer and Application of his methods to parenting...

Often what happens is, we would tend to avoid those mistakes that we thought our parents made, and marred our lives(or so we think, ask them, they would have a totally different explanation to give) we would like to avoid. Like in your case sudipta, if your mom overcontrolled you so that you were not allowed to make mistakes, then you r reaction to it must've been something where you don't even want to instruct your son on possible mistakes. The fact could be somewhere you would have across a person in your own age group who was very confident in his ways. So, somehow deep down you would have thought that you would do it that way- allow the freedom to make mistakes and make a real learning experience out of life. At the same we do not know really if we had taken a good decision. Like when I read WWD I thought he seems reasonable, may that was what missing in my own upbinging, though I had had a lot of freedom, I must confess. My parents never pushed an idea too far. But when came to esteem building they were somehow wanting. They did move to but it was much later in life when character couldn't be shaped. This is the reason why I concentrated on the two things I would eschew and what I would emphasize. Whil;e character building wise this had helped, as well as developing less dependency, the attitude to education that we had had is just about missing in both my children. Now that my daughter is still very young I would like to explicitly emphasize unlike the inplicit explication by living through which I/We did but [B]that didn't work at all, in my son's case[/B]. Looks like almost all parents only experiment and get to wherever they can!!!

Surprisingly Sanjana, I shared with my wife a practising Clinical Psychologist herself, about how I have whined on Dyer on mylot. Her first response was Dyer being an American, his advice need not entirely fit Indian ethos. I said I am not talking about anything culture specific here. And then surprisingly we went off our parents ahd not bothered to really bring us up as individuals instead all their concerns were, we should not be demanding children when we grow up esp., in matters of marriage(choice of sopuse), in matters of education( not be a burden on them)..in that she went on to complain that the basic premise of their bringing up was: Children must not turn out to be problems for them in later days.So no special appreciations. They would like to put down even excellent work done by us so that we should not try to manipulate them into accepting what we decide in matters of spouse choice(More so for girls)and demand too much of financial support from them. In short she said our parents' perceptios were short-sighted and extrememly selfush. The putting down was done so that we do not go out of their control and be of no use to the family. This in turn stunted our growths as individuals is her contention. Now there is more than a grain of truth in this, if one really looks back. But somehow I am a man, further, these are not ny complaints against my parents though my parents' behavior was also exact. She was also brought in a family where lot of a bit too much, to be precise, freedom in growing. I too ddi have a lot of freedom and could feel friendly vibes with my father as well as mother. But they did not delve into psychological study of kids to do a good parenting. Yes I remember my father did study Dr.Benjamin Spock and perhaps applied some of the principles, but this[B]building of self-esteem of children was very much wanting[/B] in their parenting. Whereas we took extra care about this due to our atudies. The results are there as I have shared in the post above under Kala56.